Kirk Douglas trivia: 39 amazing facts about the legendary actor

Kirk Douglas was one of the legendary Hollywood actors. He made over 90 movies during his career.

He died on February, 5 2020. So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about his life and career.

1. Kirk Douglas was an American actor, producer, director, philanthropist and author
2. His birth name is Issur Danielovitch
3. He was born on December 9, 1916
4. He died on February 5, 2020
5. He was from an impoverished family with immigrant parents
6. He had six sisters
7. He made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck
8. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s
9. He was known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films
10. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films
11. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style
12. Which he displayed as a criminal defense attorney in Town Without Pity (1961)
13. Douglas became an international star through positive reception for his leading role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949)
14. The film brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor
15. His other early films include Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole opposite Jan Sterling (1951), and Detective Story (1951)
16. For the latter he received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama
17. He received a second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner
18. His third nomination for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956)
19. The film also landed him a second Golden Globe nomination
20. In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960)
21. In those two films, he collaborated with the then-relatively-unknown director Stanley Kubrick
22. Taking lead roles in both films
23. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit
24. He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), considered a classic, and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster
25. He had made seven films with the actor
26. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
27. A story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas
28. Michael Douglas turned it into an Oscar-winning film
29. As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas received three Academy Award nominations, an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom
30. As an author, he wrote ten novels and memoirs
31. He is No. 17 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema
32. This was the highest-ranked living person on the list until his death
33. After barely surviving a helicopter crash in 1991
34. He then suffering a stroke in 1996
35. He focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life
36. He lived with his second wife (of 65 years), Anne Buydens
37. She is a producer
38. They stayed together until his death on February 5, 2020, at age 103
39. A centenarian, he was one of the last surviving stars of the film industry’s Golden Age