Hard to believe really, how time flies... Kirk Douglas: ‘I never thought I’d live to 100. That’s shocked me’ He uses a walker, and a stroke has affected his speech, but the old charm is still there as the actor recalls his old Hollywood friends Burt Lancaster and John Wayne – and how he was never really a tough guy Both the house and the man are smaller than you would expect, a result of the diminishing effects of old age that come to us all, if we are lucky enough to live that long. Kirk Douglas, now 100 years old, and Anne, his wife of 62 years, moved into the small bungalow in Beverly Hills about 30 years ago when they downsized from the multiple mansions where they had entertained friends such as Fred Astaire, Lauren Bacall and Ronald Reagan while Frank Sinatra knocked up Italian meals in their kitchen. But if their current home looks unprepossessing from the outside, there are extraordinary treasures within: a Roy Lichtenstein, personally inscribed to Douglas, hangs in the front hallway, while a Picasso and Robert Rauschenberg hang in the living room. The house is filled with modern masterpieces, a testament to the riches accrued by the man originally known as Issur Danielovitch – born so poor that he regularly went hungry until his mid-20s – through his own talent and self-forged toughness. When Douglas himself enters the living room, he is leaning on a walker and accompanied by one of the various nurses who care for him and his wife around the clock. There is no question that reaching your centenary takes it out of a man: every movement suggests effort. Most frustrating for him, his tongue hangs heavy in his mouth, the result of a stroke in 1996, and the once-ringing diction is now slurred. Yet to judge the interior by the exterior proves to be a mistake. When Douglas starts talking not even the muffling layers of age can hide his still charmingly boyish personality, even if his body occasionally lets him down. He is, he says, “a little tired today”, but he makes sure to look a lady straight in the eye when he smiles. “How do I feel in general? Ahh,” he says, with a decidedly Jewish shrug, and during our time together he asks, anxiously and often: “Do you understand what I’m saying?” I do, mostly. That famously pugnacious chin is a little receded, but those familiar close-set eyes, which he passed on to his eldest son, Michael, are bright. Michael, as it happens, is currently staying in the guesthouse by the pool, visiting for a few days, as he does every month. “He comes to visit the old man,” Douglas says with pride................ MORE
Thanks for the above Terry, Kirk is up there with James Stewart and Cagney for me Kirk was such a good actor This line from a review of the article did make me laugh as I was thinking on the same lines here it is .................... his relaxed delivery, looks like the precursor to Tom Cruise at his best." (from the article) Response below ............... Is this supposed to be a measure of excellence, a complement or an insult?