Iconic actor Kirk Douglas turns 100
KIRK Douglas, whose illustrious career has taken in some of cinema’s landmark roles, turns 100 today and has attributed his remarkable longevity to his “wonderful marriage” of more than six decades.
The iconic actor revealed in a special essay to mark the milestone that his second wife Anne, 97, had been his inspiration over the years.
“I was lucky enough to find my soulmate 63 years ago, and I believe our wonderful marriage and our nightly ‘golden hour’ chats have helped me survive all things,” he writes in celebrity magazine Closer Weekly.
The three-time Oscar nominee will celebrate with 200 friends and family at a party in California hosted by his son Michael Douglas and daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The star, who was forced to retire because of speech problems after a stroke, has practised delivering a few words on the day with the help of a speech therapist.
“I am always asked for advice on living a long and healthy life. I don’t have any. I do believe, however, that we have a purpose for being here,” he says.
“I was spared after a helicopter crash and a stroke to do more good in the world before I leave it.”
Douglas, the son of illiterate Russian immigrants, appeared in some of cinema’s most iconic roles, from slave Spartacus and painter Vincent van Gogh to Western legend Doc Holliday.
He was in more than 80 movies but never took a role in a sequel.
Born Issur Danielovitch in poverty in New York to a Jewish father and Protestant mother, Douglas went to the city’s Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Champion (1949) earned him the first of three Oscar nominations for best actor, an award that has eluded him but was finally snared by his son Michael for Wall Street (1987).
Among his most famous films were the 1956 Van Gogh biopic Lust for Life, Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Spartacus (1960) and Seven Days in May (1964).
Douglas’s first marriage to American actress Diana Webster produced sons Michael and Joel before it ended in divorce in 1951.
Three years later he married Anne Buydens. They had two sons, Eric, who died in 2004, and Peter. — AFP