Reflecting on the life of Kirk Douglas, who died earlier this week at the age of 103, Jamie Lee Curtis took to Instagram to talk about her parents’ friend and co-star. In doing so, she recalled how the Hollywood legend also saved her life.
“I just remembered this morning that Kirk saved my life when I rode my tricycle into the pool at a party and he dove in and brought me up from the bottom, still peddling [sic],” she shared on Instagram.
Douglas co-starred with Curtis’ father, Tony Curtis, in four movies. Most famously was 1960’s Spartacus, directed by Stanley Kubrick, but 1958 saw Richard Fleischer’s The Vikings, followed by Blake Edwards’s Operation Petticoat in 1959. John Huston’s The List of Adrian Messenger came in 1963.
The Vikings also starred Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh. Curtis used a publicity still of Kirk Douglas with her parents (and a beaming Ernest Borgnine) from the swashbuckling historical epic in her Instagram post, along with candid shots from her childhood.
Kirk Douglas’s funeral was held Friday in Los Angeles. In addition to his widow, Anne Buydens, his sons Peter, Joel and Michael Douglas and daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones, Steven Spielberg was in attendance.