Spartacus Kirk Douglas, a star of Hollywood's golden age, dies at 103

Los Angeles: Kirk Douglas, one of the last surviving movie stars from Hollywood's golden age, whose rugged good looks and muscular intensity made him a commanding presence in celebrated films like

Lust for Life, Spartacus and Paths of Glory, died on Wednesday at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was 103.

His son the actor Michael Douglas announced the death in a statement on a micro blogging page.

Douglas had made a long and difficult recovery from the effects of a severe stroke he suffered in 1996. In 2011, cane in hand, he came onstage at the Academy Awards ceremony, good-naturedly flirted with the co-host Anne Hathaway and jokingly stretched out his presentation of the Oscar for best supporting actress.

By then, and even more so as he approached 100 and largely dropped out of sight, he was one of the last flickering stars in a Hollywood firmament that few in Hollywood's Kodak Theater on that Oscars evening could have known except through viewings of old movies now called classics. A vast number filling the hall had not even been born when he was at his screen-star peak, the 1950s and '60s.

But in those years Kirk Douglas was as big a star as there was — a member of a pantheon of leading men, among them Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, who rose to fame in the postwar years.

And like the others he was instantly recognizable: the jutting jaw, the dimpled chin, the piercing gaze and the breaking voice, the last making him irresistible fodder for comedians who specialized in impressions.

In his heyday, Douglas appeared in as many as three movies a year, often delivering critically acclaimed performances. In his first 11 years of film acting, he was nominated three times for the Academy Award for best actor.

He was known for manly roles, in westerns, war movies and Roman-era spectacles, most notably Spartacus (1960). But in 80 movies across a half-century he was equally at home on mean city streets, in smoky jazz clubs and, as Vincent van Gogh, amid the flowers of Arles in the south of France.

Many of his earlier films were forgettable — variations on well-worn Hollywood themes — and moviegoers were slow to recognize some of his best work. But when he found the right role, he proved he could be very good indeed.

Early on he was hailed for his performances as an unprincipled Hollywood producer, opposite Lana Turner, in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and as van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956). Each brought an Oscar nomination.

Many critics thought he should have gotten more recognition for his work in two films in particular: Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957), in which he played a French colonel in World War I trying vainly to prevent the execution of three innocent soldiers, and Lonely Are the Brave (1962), an offbeat western about an aging cowboy.