Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Kirk Douglas

Actor

Born - 9 December 1916, Amsterdam, New York, USA
Died - 5 February 2020

Virile, forceful, fair-haired, powerfully-built iconic American star with dimpled chin and fierce grin. Apt to get hold of a role and tear it apart, he had a reputation for being abrasive with directors and co-stars alike, but proved a dominant personality and magnetic box-office attraction from the first of his three Academy Award nominations, for his doomed boxer in Champion, a powerful role that set the standard for his career. Later he directed a couple of films and received an honorary Oscar in 1996. Born Issur Danielovitch of Russian parentage, he entered films at 29, at first as sneering villains, but soon in star roles, a status he maintained into his sixties. Many memorable film appearances included those in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946, his first), Build My Gallows High/Out of the Past (1947), The Walls of Jericho (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Young Man With a Horn/Young Man of Music (1950), Ace in the Hole/The Big Carnival (1951), Detective Story (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Man Without a Star (1955), Lust for Life (1956), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), The Vikings (1958), Spartacus (1960), Lonely Are the Brave (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), The Way West (1967), The Brotherhood (1968), There Was a Crooked Man (1970), A Gunfight (1971), Scalawag (1973), Posse (1975), The Fury (1978), Saturn 3 (1980), The Final Countdown (1980), The Man from Snowy River (1981), Eddie Macon's Run (1983), Tough Guys (1986), Oscar (1991), Greedy (1994), Diamonds (1999), It Runs in the Family (2003) and Illusion (2004). His last appearance came in the TV movie Empire State Building Murders in 2008. The father of actor Michael Douglas, he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1996, but made a partial recovery. A liberal thinker who helped break the McCarthy blacklist in the early 1960s, his autobiography, The Ragman's Son, was a best-seller in 1988.