horrified. “Christ, Kirk, how can you play a part like that?” he reportedly demanded. “We got to play strong, tough characters, not these weak queers.”

Douglas was similarly active behind the scenes. His production company, Bryna Productions, was instrumental in developing what would arguably prove to be his two greatest pictures – Paths of Glory and Spartacus, both directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Other key roles includes a swashbuckling turn in The Vikings and his performance as a doomed modern-day cowboy in 1962’s Lonely are the Brave. For good measure he made seven films opposite Burt Lancaster, running the gamut from Gunfight at the OK Corral to the political thriller Seven Days in May.

Douglas was Oscar nominated three times – for Champion, The Bad and the Beautiful and Lust For Life– but had to be content with the honorary award he was eventually given in 1995. In 1981 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by his friend Jimmy Carter.

Kirk Douglas: ‘I never thought I’d live to 100. That’s shocked me’ Read more

By the 1970s Douglas’s star was on the wane. He was judged to be too old to play the role of rebellious RP McMurphy in his long-cherished mission to adapt the Ken Kesey novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The film was later produced by his son Michael, with Jack Nicholson in the leading role.

Despite suffering a debilitating stroke in 1996, Douglas continued to be active. He made his final screen appearance in 2004 – playing a dying film director in the low budget