Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, in Amsterdam, New York. His family later adopted the surname Demsky, and he grew up as Izzy Demsky before changing his name to Kirk Douglas before joining the United States Navy in World War II.
Kirk Douglas received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor: for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and Lust for Life (1956). He never won a competitive Oscar but received an Honorary Academy Award in 1996 for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community.
Douglas insisted that Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted as one of the Hollywood 10, receive an official on-screen credit for writing the screenplay for Spartacus (1960). Trumbo had intended to use the pseudonym "Sam Jackson." Douglas later called this the thing he was most proud of in his career.
Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster made seven films together over more than four decades: I Walk Alone (1947), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), Victory at Entebbe (1976), and Tough Guys (1986). Their final collaboration in Tough Guys completed a partnership of more than 40 years.
Kirk Douglas died on the 5th of February 2020, at age 103, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was buried on the 7th of February 2020 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in the same plot as his son Eric.
Kirk Douglas purchased the rights to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest from author Ken Kesey and starred in a Broadway production of the play in 1963, which ran for five months. Unable to find a producer for a film version over the following decade, he gave the movie rights to his son Michael Douglas, who produced the 1975 film that won all five major Academy Awards.