Who played the title character in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus?

Kirk Douglas played the title character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film Spartacus.

Douglas portrayed Spartacus, an enslaved Thracian gladiator who leads a large rebellion against Rome. Douglas also served as the film’s executive producer and helped bring the project to the screen after acquiring the rights to Howard Fast’s 1951 novel.

The production became a major Hollywood epic, with Laurence Olivier as the Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, Jean Simmons as Varinia, and Peter Ustinov as Batiatus. Ustinov won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Spartacus is also associated with the Hollywood blacklist because Douglas insisted that screenwriter Dalton Trumbo receive on-screen credit. The decision helped signal a change in the industry’s treatment of blacklisted writers. Kubrick directed the film, but his later comments showed that he felt he had less creative control than on his subsequent projects.