Welcome to the Posts section of the official Kirk Douglas website. Its purpose is to let Kirk share his thoughts and activities with you, and to enable you to share your thoughts with him.
Below you’ll find links to the most recent "Reflections" and "Activities" posts.
Clicking the “Reflections” button to the left, you’ll be taken to a page where Kirk, a best-selling writer as well as a movie star, has posted his most recent thoughts and musings.
Clicking the “Activities” button, you’ll be taken to a page where you can learn about current and past goings-on in which Kirk is involved.
Clicking the "Kirk Douglas Theatre" button, you'll get the latest news about productions at the theatre, named to honor Kirk Douglas and established as the newest and most intimate of the Center Theatre Group's spaces, which include the Ahmanson and Mark Taper Theatres at the Los Angeles Music Center.
By clicking “Fan Mail,” you’ll have the opportunity to share your thoughts with Kirk.
Kirk Doulgas's new book, written with his wife Anne, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood is now available. This link will enable you to order a copy, and have part of the proceeds go to the work of The Douglas Foundation.
Film legend Kirk Douglas and Anne Buydens, his wife of nearly sixty-three years, look back on a lifetime filled with drama both on and off the screen. Sharing priceless correspondence with each other as well as the celebrities and world leaders they called friends, Kirk and Anne is a candid portrayal of the pleasures and pitfalls of a Hollywood life lived in the public eye.
Compiled from Anne's private archive of letters and photographs, this is an intimate glimpse into the Douglases' courtship and marriage set against the backdrop of Kirk's screen triumphs, including The Vikings, Lust For Life, Paths of Glory, and Spartacus. The letters themselves, as well as Kirk and Anne's vivid descriptions of their experiences, reveal remarkable insight and anecdotes about the legendary figures they knew so well, including Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, the Kennedys, and the Reagans. Filled with photos from film sets, private moments, and public events, Kirk and Anne details the adventurous, oftentimes comic, and poignant reality behind the glamour of a Hollywood life-as only a couple of sixty-two years (and counting) could tell it.
Kirk Douglas Celebrates Wife Anne Buydens’s 100th Birthday, Shares How Their Love Started
- Created on Monday, 29 April 2019
- Written by Louise Bevan
The Epoch Times April 29, 2019
Can we all say “couple goals?”
Between them, they’ve lived 202 years on this glorious planet. Just four months after Kirk Douglas’s 102nd birthday celebrations on Dec. 9, 2018, the Spartacus icon steered his soul mate and wife of 64 years, Anne Buydens, into the spotlight for her 100th.
The couple’s star-studded family includes Kirk’s son, the Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Evidently, the family is close.
Catherine posted a sweet birthday message to her “beautiful” father-in-law on her Instagram account for all the world to see. “Happy 102nd birthday to the most beautiful man,” she wrote. “We love you Kirk.”
The heartfelt tribute to the actress’s father-in-law featured a slideshow of family photos and a girl singing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” at the piano. USA Today intimated that the young musician may in fact be Kirk’s granddaughter, Carys, and if it’s true, then talent really does run in the family.
Carys and her brother Dylan both posted their own enthusiastic birthday congratulations to their “Pappy,” with Dylan adding a special message to his role model: “Though you are adored by millions,” he wrote, “my love for you is by far the greatest.”
The centenarian actor’s wife, Anne Buydens, was born in 1919 in Hanover, Germany. She moved to Paris as a young woman to work as a film publicist where, at the age of 34, she was noticed for her captivating beauty by her future husband. Kirk, smitten, quickly proceeded to ask her for a date.
Speaking to USA Today, Kirk recalled his wife’s unexpected refusal, jokingly calling her “terrible.”
“I invited her to dinner and she said, ‘Oh thank you very much, but I’m so tired,'” he shared. “She was the most difficult woman I ever met!”
Anne remembers it differently. “[He] took a look at me and then he said, ‘Would you like to have dinner tonight with my friends at some chic restaurant?’” Anne recalled. “And I said, ‘No, thank you, I think I’ll go home and make myself some scrambled eggs.'”
Anne’s reticence eventually thawed, as the couple married on May 29, 1954. Kirk’s secret? “I stopped talking about myself and began to listen to her,” he admitted. They soon had two beautiful children together.
Over the decades that followed, Anne became a well-respected philanthropist, producer, and art collector. To add a sartorial string to her bow, Anne has also been a member of Vanity Fair‘s International Best Dressed List since the 1970s.
She still looks amazing at 100.
Michael Douglas paid fitting tribute to his father while receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one month before his father’s 102nd birthday. Reuters posted the video in which Douglas addresses his father off-stage: “I’ll say it simply and with all my heart,” he shared. “I’m so proud to be your son.”
Kirk and Anne published a book together in 2017, titled Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood. As they celebrated their happiness and longevity, the 64-years-married couple posed for photographs sitting in adjacent wheelchairs, holding hands.
We dare you not to swoon!
The Centennial Couple – Kirk Douglas is 102 and his Wife Anne Just Turned 100!
- Created on Wednesday, 24 April 2019
- Written by Nancy Bilyeau
--Vintage News April 23, 2019
Many movie fans are aware that Kirk Douglas is 102 years old, but he’s only part of the longevity equation in his home. Douglas’ wife, Anne Buydens, turns 100 on April 23, 2019. The two have been married for 64 years and in interviews the actor has said she is his soul mate. In the famous Douglas clan, populated by Kirk’s oldest son, Michael, and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anne is someone who may not win as many headlines. But her life has been an interesting one.
She was born in 1919 in Hanover, Germany, moving with her family to Belgium. She was well educatied, achieving fluency in English, German, and French, and was living and working in Paris when an actor named Kirk Douglas asked her for a date in 1953.
Buydens was working as a film publicist in Paris when she was introduced to Douglas, then filming Act of Love, according to the couple’s joint memoir, Kirk and Anne. She met him in his trailer, known as “the lion’s den” by those working on the film, because the divorced actor was such a playboy.
According to their memoir, Douglas “took a look at me and then he said, ‘Would you like to have dinner with my friends at some chic restaurant?’ And I said, ‘No, thank you, I think I’ll go home and make myself some scrambled eggs.’ That was not what he expected.”
Although Douglas was annoyed by her refusal, he later hired her to be his publicist. They got to know each other on a platonic basis. “With no romance in the picture, I stopped trying to impress Anne. Instead I stopped talking about myself and began to listen to her,” they wrote in their book.
They married on May 29, 1954, and had two children. (Michael is Kirk’s son by his first marriage to actress Diana Dill.) Their son Eric passed away in 2004. In Kirk and Anne, Douglas shared that he had affairs with actresses like Rita Hayworth, Patricia Neal, and Joan Crawford’s daughter, Christina Crawford. “Kirk never tried to hide his dalliances from me,” Buydens said in the book. “As a European, I understood it was unrealistic to expect total fidelity in a marriage.”
Anne Buydens is a well-respected philanthropist and art collector. She has a better sense of money than Kirk, both agree, starting with helping him see that his money manager in the 1950s was not doing a good job, they wrote in their memoir.
