Spartacus star and Hollywood great Kirk Douglas turns 100
Kirk Douglas, star of film classic Spartacus and one of Hollywood's last surviving Golden Age actors, has turned 100.
Video report by Rachel Younger:
The screen veteran has racked up three Oscar nominations over seven decades having starred in his first film in 1946.
Douglas, father of actor Michael, played the title character in historical epic Spartacus (1960), which coined the well-known phrase "I'm Spartacus".
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the film also starred Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Peter Ustinov and Tony Curtis.
Born Issur Danielovitch in 1916 in New York, Douglas is one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood - which includes the likes of Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando.
Douglas was also well-known for his role as Ned Land in adventure film 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954), a movie personally produced by Walt Disney.
The American also earned himself Oscar nominations for Best Actor in Champion (1949), The Bad And The Beautiful (1952) and Lust For Life (1956).
The star had a number of high-profile relationships, including with Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich.
Married twice, Douglas had actor son Michael, 72 - who is married to Catherine Zeta-Jones - with his first wife Diana Dill.
In 1954, Douglas married Anne Budyens, 97, with whom he has been wed to ever since.
During his acting career, Douglas was credited with helping to put an end to the Hollywood Blacklist, where employment was denied to those working in the entertainment industry who had been accused of having communist ties.
In 1960, Douglas himself had acknowledged that former Communist Party member Dalton Trumbo was the screenwriter for Spartacus.
Despite suffering a severe stroke in 1996, Douglas went through years of voice therapy to get back into acting.
The most recent film he appeared in was 2004's Illusion, about an ailing movie director, and in 2008 he featured in TV movie Empire State Building Murders.
As an author, he has published 10 novels and memoirs.