Hollywood legend and venerated superstar Kirk Douglas has died at the age of 103, his son Michael Douglas announced yesterday.
One of the few remaining survivors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Kirk Douglas was best known for films including Spartacus, Ace In The Hole and Champion.
It was Champion which, in 1949, earned him the first of three best actor Oscar nominations, with a second for his role in 1952's The Bad And The Beautiful and a third for the 1956 van Gogh biopic, Lust for Life.
He made his film debut in 1946 noir The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers, with his explosive acting style and masculine persona making him a perfect fit for Hollywood at the time.
Douglas is perhaps known for the 1960 historical epic Spartacus, in which he played the leader of a slave revolt in ancient Rome. While his acting won plaudits, the film also marked Douglas' rebellion against the Hollywood blacklist during the Cold War era, when he gave full credit to the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
Here, we take a look at his some of the best films of his long and storied career.
Spartacus (1960)
Perhaps Douglas' best known film, in which he played the leader of the slave revolt in the third century BC.
Released in 1960, the film features one of the most quoted scenes in cinema, in which the recaptured slaves are ordered to identify their leader in exchange for their lives during the movie's climax.
But instead of identifying their leader, one by one they response by each claiming to be Spartacus, thereby sealing their own fate.
A box office hit, Douglas once again joined forces with Stanley Kubrick to play the slave leader. However, it was his championing of writer Dalton Trumbo that fatally weakened the Hollywood blacklist, and he became a hero to those ostracised by it.
Champion (1949)
The film that saw Douglas earn his fist Academy Award nod, Champion tells the story of the poor and unscrupulous Irish boxing hero Midge Kelly, whose accidental ascent to the top of the boxing world comes with its own set of problems.
While anti-hero Midge Kelly manages to become the best in the game, his willingness to stab anyone in the back to get where he wants to be reveals him to be a short-sighted, arrogant man with a nasty temper.
Based on a short story by Ring Lardner, Champion is a gritty noir boxing drama which earned five Oscar nominations, winning one, following its 1949 release.
Lust for Life (1956)
The film which won him a Golden Globe for Best Actor, and his third Oscar nomination, Lust for Life is widely regarded as one of Douglas' best films.
The 1956 biopic saw Douglas portray Vincent Van Gogh and a film in which he took the same passion displayed in Champion and apply it to the life of the famous Dutch painter.
Widely acclaimed for its portrayal of mental health issues, Douglas played a tortured soul riven by jealousy, obsession and maddening frustration, whose descent into absolute poverty comes as a result of his devotion to painting.
With a 100 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, Lust for Life is often thought of as one of Douglas' finest performances on film.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Douglas' screen debut was a film noir in which the actor played the alcoholic Walter O'Neil, a young, jealous and insecure weakling whose life is dominated by his wife, Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck), and is witness to a murder which underpins the whole drama.
To the outside world, their relationship is unconventional and why they are together is a mystery, until the sudden return of Sam Masterson, playing here by Van Heflin.
It was Douglas' first screen role, but the last time he would ever play a weakling, with his other films projecting a more powerful leading man image. Nevertheless, it is one of three of the actor's films to have scored a perfect 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Bad And The Beautiful (1952)
Douglas starred opposite Lana Turner in this classic 1952 melodrama, in which he played amoral and unscrupulous film producer Jonathan Shields.
Often regarded as something of a love letter to Hollywood, Douglas' ruthless Shields alienates everyone close to him, especially the three young people (a director, an actress and a screenwriter), whose careers he launched only to later betray.
However, it is thanks to Shields that the three are now at the top of their industry, leading to the trio never quite able to shake the hugely persuasive film producer.
Nominated for a slew of Academy Awards on its release, The Bad And The Beautiful won five out of the six gongs it was up for – a record for the time.
