Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical

Historical fiction

Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

 and based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast

Howard Fast

Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.-Early life:Fast was born in New York City...

. The life story of the historical figure Spartacus

Spartacus

Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...

 and the events of the Third Servile War

Third Servile War

The Third Servile War , also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Roman Servile Wars...

 were adapted by Dalton Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo

James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...

 as a screenplay.

The film stars Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...

 as rebellious slave Spartacus and Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 as his foe, the Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus

Marcus Licinius Crassus

Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general and politician who commanded the right wing of Sulla's army at the Battle of the Colline Gate, suppressed the slave revolt led by Spartacus, provided political and financial support to Julius Caesar and entered into the political alliance known as the...

. Co-starring are Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov

Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...

 (who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 for his role as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus

Lentulus Batiatus

Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus was the Roman owner of a gladiatorial school in Capua , in southern Italy. It was from this school that in 73 BC, the Thracian slave, Spartacus, and about 70 to 78 followers, escaped...

), John Gavin

John Gavin

John Gavin is an American film actor and a former United States Ambassador to Mexico. Gavin is half Mexican and fluent in Spanish....

 (as Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

), Jean Simmons

Jean Simmons

Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE was an English actress. She appeared predominantly in motion pictures, beginning with films made in Great Britain during and after World War II – she was one of J...

, Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...

, John Ireland

John Ireland (actor)

John Benjamin Ireland was an actor and film director.-Biography:Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he was raised in New York City from the age of 18. He started out in minor stage roles on Broadway...

, Herbert Lom

Herbert Lom

Herbert Lom is a Czech film actor, best known for his role as former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movie series.-Life and career:...

, Woody Strode

Woody Strode

Woodrow Wilson Woolwine "Woody" Strode was a decathlete and football star who went on to become a pioneering black American film actor. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor for his role in Spartacus in 1960...

, Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

, John Dall

John Dall

John Dall was an American actor.Primarily a stage actor, he is best remembered today for two film roles; the cool-minded intellectual killer in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, and the trigger-happy lead in the 1950 noir Gun Crazy.He first came to fame as the young prodigy who comes alive under the...

 and Charles McGraw

Charles McGraw

Charles Butters , best known by his stage name Charles McGraw, was an American actor, who made his first film in 1942, albeit in a small, uncredited role. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa.-Career:...

.