Actress
Born: January 22, 1923;
Died: July 3, 2015
Diana Douglas, who has died of cancer aged 92, was an actress and the first wife of Kirk Douglas and the mother of Michael Douglas. She had a long-running career in film and television and often appeared with her former husband and son.
Born Diana Love Dill in Bermuda, where her family had lived for centuries and her father was the attorney general, she was sent to boarding school in England and graduated from the Upper Chine School for Girls on the Isle of Wight.
She later moved to New York and met Kirk Douglas while they were both studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She then went to California on a $200-a-week contract with Warner Bros. against the advice of her new husband Douglas, who said she should try for Broadway instead.
She found success though and went on to have a six-decade career as an actress and model, appearing in dozens of movies and television episodes, including the 1987 Steve Martin film Planes, Trains and Automobiles and the TV shows ER and The West Wing. She also appeared on the cop drama The Streets of San Francisco with her son Michael. She also had stage roles, including some on Broadway.
She met her future husband Kirk Douglas during the Second World War after she appeared on the cover of Life magazine, modelling spring fashions in May 1943.
According to an obituary from Michael Douglas's production company, Furthur Films: "Kirk Douglas, by then serving in the Navy during World War II, saw her on the cover and told his shipmates he would marry her."
They wed that November and went on the have two sons, Michael and Joel, before divorcing in 1951.
In her memoirs, Diana Douglas wrote: "We had brought to marriage such different concepts of what it constituted."
However, she managed to establish a friendship with her former husband. "I always enjoyed Kirk's sense of humour, even when I was angriest at him," she said. "He could always make me laugh, somehow, which annoyed the hell out of me."
Douglas also admitted in her memoirs that said she had an affair with Errol Flynn before marrying Kirk Douglas in 1943.
Later, she appeared with her ex husband in several movies, including her last film, 2003's It Runs in the Family, which also starred Michael Douglas and one of her grandsons, Cameron.
Douglas was also married to actor Bill Darrid from 1956 until his death in 1992.
She died of cancer at a motion picture industry retirement home and is survived by her husband Donald Webster, who was Treasury Department official in the Nixon administration, her sons Michael and Joel; and three grandchildren.
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