It is no surprise that Kirk Douglas (who will be 100 in December) has out-lived almost all his contemporaries. In his greatest roles on screen, the Hollywood star has always played survivors. Whether he was cast as a Hollywood producer down on his luck (The Bad And The Beautiful), an arrogant boxer getting his come-uppance (The Champion), a seedy journalist looking for one last scoop to save his career (Ace In The Hole) or the leader of a slaves’ revolt (Spartacus), his characters have a relentless inner drive. They don’t give up. Look at any still of the dimple-chinned actor, whether in a western, a melodrama or a gangster movie, and his expression is always the same. His brow is furrowed. He is staring defiantly and very fiercely at whatever is in front of him.

Last year, in the movie Trumbo, about blacklisted Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo, Douglas was portrayed on screen as a young man by Dean O’Gorman. It was a skilled piece of mimicry. O’Gorman looked very like Douglas and had clearly researched his role exhaustively. What O’Gorman lacked, though, was the saturnine ferocity that characterised the Hollywood legend and sometimes made him very frightening on screen.

“I came from abject poverty: there was nowhere to go but up,” Douglas once commented of his transformation from ragman’s son to movie star. It was a statement of intent that he never wavered from. He knew exactly where he was headed. You had the sense he would trample on anyone who got in his way. At the same time, even when he was playing heroic types, he was always keen to show us their darker, more vicious side. Look, for example, at William Wyler’s Detective Story (1951), in which he plays a New York detective called Jim McLeod. He is clean-cut, handsome, popular and deeply in love with his young wife (Eleanor Parker). It’s an overwrought and stagey movie, almost entirely set in the police station, but has some extraordinary scenes late on after the detective discovers his wife once had an abortion. The all-American hero turns into a near psychopath in his rage and disgust at her betrayal. When he talks about the “dirty pictures”, he sees in his mind, we quickly realise the depths of his own self-loathing and capacity for violence. “I’d rather go to jail for 20 years than find out my wife was a tramp!” he yells at his most abject moment.

In interviews, Douglas often talked about being drawn to play dark characters rather than the “nice fella” on the grounds that “virtue is not photogenic”. Even when he is cast as principled and heroic figures – for example, when he played the French officer defending shell-shocked and traumatised soldiers accused of cowardice in Stanley Kubrick’s First World War drama Paths Of Glory (1957) – he brings a seething, restless quality to the role.

Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Show all 14 1 /14 Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Bill Murray With only one Oscar nomination to his name (2003's Lost in Translation), Bill Murray is one oversight that - in many people's eyes - could easily throw the Academy Awards into disrepute. AFP/Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Samuel L. Jackson Considering he's one of the most bankable film stars in the world, it's a surprise that - with over 160 credits to his name - Samuel L. Jackson has only received a mere one nomination (Pulp Fiction in 1994). 2016 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Joaquin Phoenix With three previous nominations under his belt - for films including Gladiator and The Master - it was his performance as Johnny Cash in 2005 biopic Walk the Line that was expected to see him win an Oscar (he lost to the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's for Capote). 2015 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Brad Pitt The ever-present fixture he remains in Hollywood today, you'd think Brad Pitt would have won an Oscar by now; while serving as producer of 2014 Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave, he currently has zero acting wins to his name despite three nominations (Twelve Monkeys, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Moneyball). 2015 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Tom Cruise Still one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, Tom Cruise seemed like a sure awards bet back in the Nineties with films Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia all earning him nominations - and yet, he never once emerged victorious. 2015 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Richard Gere Would you believe us if we told you Richard Gere has never even been nominated? Well, it's true - and, quite honestly, shocks us quite a bit. Poor guy. Juan Naharro Gimenez Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Gary Oldman One of the film industry's finest character actors, Gary Oldman has been nominated just the once for playing George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 2014 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Johnny Depp Despite his recent dip in quality, Johnny Depp has delivered several Oscar-worthy performances in the past. With a total of three nominations to his name - all for post-2000 releases including Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Neverland - it's more a wonder he didn't receive more recognition for standout films such as Ed Wood and Donnie Brasco in the Nineties. 2015 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Harrison Ford Harrison Ford may now be the world's highest-grossing actor (sorry, Samuel) but still doesn't have the Academy Award to back up such a feat. In fact, he's now into his third decade of not receiving recognition from the Academy with his sole nomination arriving back in 1985 for Witness. Getty Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Edward Norton Edward Norton is just the kind of actor you'd assume would've scooped a statuette at some stage or another, but no - Norton just has three nominations to speak of; his first in 1996 (Primal Fear), his second in 1999 (American History X) and his third just last year (Best Picture winner, Birdman). AFP/Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't John Malkovich American actor John Malkovich was nominated once in 1984 (Places in the Heart) and again in 1993 (In the Line of Fire) but hasn't posed much of a threat since. 2013 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Annette Bening Poor Annette Bening, who has come close to victory four times (The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right) but is yet to clinch one. 2015 Getty Images Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Glenn Close ...well, it could be worse; she could be Glenn Close who has been on the shortlist six times for films including Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons and, most recently, Albert Nobbs. Actors you think have won Oscars but haven't Helena Bonham Carter Helena Bonham Carter may have received a Best Actress nomination for Wings of a Dove (1997), but it was her Best Supporting Actress nomination for 2012's Best Picture winner The King's Speech that seemed a sure bet; Melissa Leo's role in The Fighter won that round. 2015 Getty Images

Douglas was born as Issur Danielovich in Amsterdam, New York. His parents were immigrants who had fled to the US from Belarus to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. They changed their name to Demsky. (Douglas as a kid was known as Izzy Demsky.) The actor’s biography reads like the typical all-American wish fulfilment fantasy. The ragman’s son who grew up in dire poverty discovered his knack for acting at high school. He took countless menial jobs (including a stint as a carnival wrestler) so that he could afford to get himself into college. From there, he landed a scholarship at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

His big break came courtesy of fellow student Lauren Bacall who (after she was established in Hollywood herself.) She recommended that producer Hal Wallis check him out. Wallis watched him on Broadway and promptly signed up Douglas to appear opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Lewis Milestone’s film noir The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers (1946). He wasn’t playing the romantic lead. His role was as Stanwyck’s needy, browbeaten, alcoholic husband but that familiar neurotic energy was already in evidence. Douglas very quickly landed eye-catching roles in films such as Out Of The Past and I Walk Alone (the first film in which he appeared on screen with Burt Lancaster). Within a decade, he was established as a big Hollywood star and had won Oscar nominations for Champion, Lust For Life and The Bad And The Beautiful.

As a screen actor, Douglas straddles two different traditions. He arrived in Hollywood when the old-style studio system was in its last throes and appeared opposite very glamorous stars such as Bacall, Linda Darnell, Jane Greer and Ann Sothern. At the same time, he had a febrile, introspective quality which allied him with the new generation of Method actors. In one of his most famous roles, as Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli’s Lust For Life, he admitted that he “became so immersed in his tortured life that it was hard to pull back”. His wife grumbled that he was so obsessed with the part that he “came home in that big red beard of Van Gogh’s, wearing those big boots, stomping around the house, it was frightening”. Douglas had his own production company. He stood up against the Hollywood anti-communist blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo to script Spartacus. He worked with the very best directors of his era, among them Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, Minnelli, Joseph L Mankiewicz and Elia Kazan.

I once attended a press conference Douglas gave when picking up a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival. He seemed very frail. He had survived a helicopter crash that killed two other passengers. He had had a stroke and his speech had been affected. Feelings of pity that anyone might have felt for him were very quickly swept away. Even in late old age, he was as fiery, combative and as witty as ever – and he knew just how to play an audience. His eyes still had that same gimlet-eyed ferocity. Just as at the start of his career, he gave the sense that he knew exactly where he was going and that no one was going to stop him from getting there.