The RIP Famous Person Thread

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Actor Kirk Douglas dies at age 103
Feb 06 2020



Actor Kirk Douglas, a fixture of cinema for six decades, has died aged 103.
The stage and screen actor was well-known for a range of roles, including the 1960 classic Spartacus, in which he played the titular character.
Born in New York in 1916, he rose to prominence during Hollywood's "golden age", earning his first Oscar nomination for the 1949 boxing story Champion.
He was also the father of Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas.
Kirk Douglas was prolific as a film actor, with more than 90 credits to his name - ranging over six decades from the 1940s to the 2000s.
He is perhaps best-known as Spartacus, a Stanley Kubrick film which won four Oscars and was so popular that its iconic "I am Spartacus" scene entered the pop culture lexicon.
Douglas was himself nominated for an Oscar three times - for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and Lust for Life (1956). He eventually won the honorary award in 1996 in recognition of his 50 years in the industry.

Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovich Demsky to penniless Jewish immigrants in the city of Amsterdam, New York state, in 1916. His father had fled Russia to escape conscription into the Tsar's army.
One of seven children, he sold snacks to local mill workers to earn enough money to buy food and in his autobiography claims to have had more than 40 jobs.
It was when he began acting in school plays that he decided a theatrical career was for him. "The one thing in my life that I always knew, that was always constant, was that I wanted to be an actor."
Already an inter-collegiate wrestling champion, he paid his way through drama college by fighting professionally, ushering and working as a car park attendant and bellhop.