Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas was an American actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer. He made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s. Douglas became an international star through positive reception for his leading role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity. In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960) In those two films, he collaborated with the then-relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit. Douglas received three Academy Award nominations, an Academy Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), considered a classic, and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas. He is No. 17 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema. After barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He was the highest-ranked living person on the list until his death. He was one of the last surviving stars of the film industry's Golden Age. He lived with his second wife (of 66 years), Anne Buydens, a producer, until his death on February 5, 2020, aged 103. He was married to Anne for 66 years.