Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas is dead at 103

Son of a ragman and icon in the film industry, Kirk Douglas died today at the grand age of 103.

“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” son Michael Douglas wrote on his Instagram account. “To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the Golden Age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.”

Kirk Douglas first achieved stardom in 1949 as a boxer in the film “Champion.” The role brought him the first of three Academy Award best actor nominations. The second, in 1952, was for his portrayal of a movie producer in “The Bad and the Beautiful,” and the third, in 1956, came for his role as Vincent van Gogh in “Lust for Life.”

In 1960, Douglas thumbed his nose as the McCarthy-era movie establishment by starring and producing the film “Spartacus,” in which he starred as a slave. He hired blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo to write the film, making him a hero among actors and writers targeted by the junior senator from Wisconsin and his cohorts. The film became Universal Studio’s biggest moneymaker of the decade, and it became a key moment to ending a reign of terror in Hollywood.

In the ‘60s, Douglas toured widely for the U.S. Information Agency and the U.S. State Department as a goodwill ambassador.

Former President Jimmy Carter awarded Douglas the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981, the highest award that can be given to a civilian in the U.S., for his “significant cultural endeavors as an actor and a goodwill ambassador.”

Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in Amsterdam, one of seven children of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He acted in more than 80 movies before he retired in 2004.

In 1996, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Douglas an honorary Oscar. His son, actor and producer Michael Douglas, has won two Oscars.

Kirk Douglas is also survived by his wife of 66 years, Anne, who is 100 years old.

Information from the Hollywood Reporter.