HOLLYWOOD -- Kirk Douglas is alive, well, and still making movies and writing books.
That is astonishing, considering the struggle the Hollywood living legend has gone through this decade. First he was in a 1991 helicopter crash that killed two others, nearly broke his back and left him in crippling pain for years. Then he suffered a stroke in 1996 that paralyzed the right side of his face and robbed him of his power of speech.
Now, through therapy, the 82-year-old Douglas has regained a lot of his ability to talk, so much so that he just shot a new movie called Diamonds, a father-son drama with Dan Aykroyd that is due out in January.
Douglas, looking frail and gnarled but still feisty enough to retain glimmers of the cockiness that made him a man's man in the movies, comes into the room for an interview Saturday with a grin on his face. He is happy to be here, facing the press to talk about his first movie since the stroke.
"There was a time when I thought, unless silent pictures come back again, I can't work any more."
Douglas wants his listeners to laugh. Humour is the best medicine. Douglas admits he struggled after his stroke, losing his sense of humour, slipping into depression and spending hours crying in his bed with the shades pulled down, cutting himself off from society except for showing up to accept his honourary Oscar shortly after the stroke.
"The tragedy is," says Douglas, "what is an actor if he can't talk? So I had to really get out of this depression because, when you have a stroke, you start to babble. You can't form words and depression sets in. You have to force yourself to start working."
'NEVER MAKE A MOVIE'
He finally did, attacking the disability with courage. "Of course, I thought at that time: I will never make a movie."
But in the movie Diamonds, Douglas' physical disability is incorporated into the story. He plays an ex-boxer who has suffered a stroke, limiting his ability to deal with the real issues of the movie, his fractured relationship with his son.
That is important to him. "I have made 82 movies and I have made a few stinkers. But I have made movies like Paths Of Glory, The Champion, The Bad And The Beautiful and Lust For Life. Of the 82 movies, I have made several that I'm very proud of and, right now, I'm so proud of Diamonds.
"Because I didn't want to make you just feel sorry for a man who has a problem with his speech because he has had a stroke. I wanted to make a man who would make you laugh. It's poignant because it's true, but it's also funny."
Douglas, the son of Russian immigrants and born as Issur Danielovitch, will be 83 on Dec. 9, when he will also celebrate his Bar Mitzvah again as a renewal of his Jewish faith.
At the same time, the energetic octogenarian will publish his seventh book, his second aimed at children. It is Young Heroes Of The Bible, Douglas' attempt to make Bible stories more interesting to kids.
"After what happened to me, this helicopter crash, this stroke, I started to read The Bible and it was very important. And I realized that, when I was a kid, I thought it was so dull. So I wrote this book for young kids. I picked out young kids in The Bible and I told the story of them so that the kids who read it will maybe say: The Bible is not so dull."
Meanwhile, he will keep working, as a writer and as an actor. "Thank you very much," Douglas offers as he glides out of the room. "We'll talk again for my next picture."
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