HOLLYWOOD -- His speech is laboured and thick, sometimes slurred, but the voice behind it still resonates with the power of a man who is one of the best-known living actors in the world.
Just over four years after the stroke that nearly killed him, Kirk Douglas isn't content to rest on his laurels and accept a graceful retirement. Instead, he's talking about comebacks - his movie comeback in the upcoming film Diamonds and his comeback from the debilitating effects of the stroke.
"When I had my stroke, I began to think, 'What is an actor who can't talk?'" said Douglas during a recent interview at an exclusive L.A. hotel.
"It was very interesting, because you realize how many things in life we take for granted. A beautiful day, the seasons and speech. When you think of something, you say it. Instantaneously. I have to figure out, 'How can my thought be transmitted to all the muscles that make the words?'
"You appreciate what you are as a human being. When I first started Diamonds, I said I hope they will understand what I'm saying."
Understanding Douglas in the film isn't difficult, but watching him can be, especially for those who grew up seeing him as the intense young star of films like The Champion, Lust For Life, Spartacus and Paths of Glory.
Douglas suffered grievous injuries in a 1991 helicopter crash that killed two people, ending up with a compressed spine that reduced his height by four centimetres and gave him a permanently hunched look.
The lingering paralysis from the stroke adds even more to his appearance of frailty.
But it is truly only an appearance, as the man's fiery passion is fully intact. In fact, his son Michael Douglas credits the accident with reawakening his father's spirituality and love of life.
In Diamonds, Douglas plays a bullheaded retired boxer and grandfather who has a contentious relationship with his son (Dan Aykroyd), who in turn isn't on the best terms with his own son (Corbin Allred). At the behest of Douglas's character, the trio head from Alberta (!) to Reno, Nevada, to find a lost cache of diamonds that was left behind decades earlier.
It's Douglas's 83rd movie in 83 years, a feat which gives him a resume so long he can't even remember some of the films he's been in.
Douglas recalled one evening when he turned on the TV and came across his young-looking self in an old movie he couldn't remember making.
"I said, 'What movie was that?' I looked and looked and finally it came to a close-up, and it was Michael. It was not my movie, it was a movie Michael had made."
The striking resemblance between father and son has for years had fans clamouring to see the two work together, something which the junior Douglas says he'd love to do if the right project came along.
But Douglas is busy enough with his own pursuits. His renewed interest in Judaism recently saw him celebrate his second bar mitzvah and pen a Bible book for kids, and he works with his wife of 45 years, Anne, on a variety of children-oriented charitable endeavours.
"I think my generation has not made a better world," said Douglas.
"We have to rely on the children.
"We hope that they will do better."
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