Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglasis an American actor, producer, director, and author. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he had his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Iverswith Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s and 1960s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war movies. During a sixty-year acting career, he has appeared in over 90 movies, and in 1960 was responsible for helping to end the Hollywood Blacklist...
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth9 December 1916
CityAmsterdam, NY
I directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.
The first time I had got an offer to come to Hollywood, I turned it down. I said, 'No, I'm an actor of the stage.'
Now, what does an actor who can't talk do? Wait for silent pictures to come back?
I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.
I don't need a critic to tell me I'm an actor. I make my own way. Nobody's my boss. Nobody's ever been my boss.
Because I love you, I will be checking up on you, ... You have honored me and I thank all of you.
I thought he was brilliant. Whenever I see that picture, I don't see my son. I see that pathetic character.
A Father. A Son. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
He was a very, very great talent and we have lost someone important.
I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who's a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.
I was going to play in First Blood, but I suggested to changing it and I dropped out. I said to [Silvester] Stallone, 'You know, I almost stopped you from making millions of dollars,' because in my suggestion, I killed his character at the end of the picture .
When you get old the worst thing is you lose so many friends. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. People who I loved to work with.
When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.
I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.