Kirk Douglas Died in 2020 at the Age of 103 With His Wife Anne By His Side
Kirk Douglas was one of the longest-living actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age. He died in 2020 at the age of 103 after a film career that spanned six decades. And the entire time, Douglas’ wife Anne Buydens was by his side. However, Douglas once called his wife the “most difficult woman I ever met.”
Kirk Douglas and his wife wrote a book about their relationship
In 2017, Douglas and Buydens co-wrote a book titled Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood when he was 100 and she was 99. The book detailed their love affair, which at that point had endured 63 years of marriage.
The couple took their story all the way back to the beginning when they first met in Paris on the set of the 1953 film Act of Love. He was the star of the movie, and she was a publicist. But their recollection of that first meeting was a bit different.
According to Buydens, Douglas was in need of a bilingual press aide. Because she was fluent in English, French, and German, she was led to Douglas’ dressing room. Which her cinematographer guide coined “the lion’s den.”
Buydens told USA Today that Douglas “took a look at me and then he said, ‘Would you like to have dinner tonight 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.”
“Well,” Buydens added, “that was not what he expected.”
The Academy Award-winning actor called his wife the ‘most difficult woman I ever met’
Douglas’ memory of meeting his wife included some different details. At the time, he was a huge box office draw. And he recalled that his future wife “was terrible” when they first met because she turned down his dinner invitation.
“She was the most difficult woman I ever met. I mean, I was a big movie star! And I invited her to dinner and she said, ‘Oh thank you very much, but I’m so tired —'” Douglas said. “And to myself I said, ‘You b—-!’ ”
Despite her refusal to go to dinner, Douglas hired Buydens and their relationship stayed platonic.
“With no romance in the picture, I stopped trying to impress Anne,” Douglas wrote in their book. “Instead, I stopped talking about myself and began to listen to her.”
What did Kirk Douglas do to win over Anne Buydens?
Even though they were just friends, Buydens kept her eye on Douglas. When they attended a charity event held at a circus, she watched the actor jump right in and help scoop elephant dung while wearing a tuxedo.
“That’s what got me,” Buydens confessed. “It was not only funny, it was showing me that he was able to do things that are not expected from him.”
Douglas and Buydens eventually married in May 1954, and the following year they welcomed their son Peter. They also welcomed a son named Eric (Michael Douglas and his brother Joel were from Kirk Douglas’ first marriage to Diana Dill). They stayed married until Douglas’ death in February 2020.
Anne Buydens Douglas passed away in April 2021 at the age of 102, just 14 months after her husband.
