Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch ; December 9, 1916 - February 5 , 2020) was an American actor, producer, director, philanthropist, and writer. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in Martha Ivers' Strange Love (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas quickly became a box office star in the 1950s, known for serious drama including Westerns and war movies. In his career, he has appeared in over 90 films. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style which he portrayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).
Douglas became an international star thanks to the positive reception for his starring role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His other early films include Young Man with the Horn (1950), starring opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole with Jan Sterling (1951) and Detective Story (1951), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in the drama. He received a second Academy Award nomination for his dramatic performance in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) opposite Lana Turner, and a third for his performance as Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), for which he also received a second Golden Globe nomination.
In 1955, he founded Bryna Productions, which began producing films as diverse as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960). In these two films, he collaborated with the relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick, playing lead roles in both films. Douglas was praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist as Dalton Trumbo wrote Spartacus with an official on-screen caption. [2] He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), considered a classic, and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which he bought and later donated to his son Michael Douglas, who turned it into an Oscar-winning film.
As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas has received three Academy Awards nominations, an Honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a Freedom Medal. As an author, he wrote ten novels and memoirs. It is ranked 17th on the list of the greatest legends of classic Hollywood cinema for men, maintained by the American Film Institute. Until his death, he is at the top of the list. Barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. He lived with his second wife (born 66), Anne Buydens, a producer, until his death on February 5, 2020, at the age of 103, he was one of the last surviving film industry stars in the Golden Age