Michael Douglas may be kissing and telling a lot in his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” but he insists he’s been a gentleman about it and only spilled the tea with the permission of each of the women with whom he had a previously undisclosed sexual relationship, including Kathleen Turner.
“There will be some intimate relationships revealed here for the first time,” the 82-year-old Oscar winner wrote in the prologue to his memoir, according to the New York Times. “I called each woman involved and asked for their permission to share our story.”
Douglas and Turner have been in the headlines since last week when an excerpt from his book ran in People magazine and confirmed a longstanding rumor — that the two had a hot-and-heavy onset romance while filming the 1984 rom-com adventure, “Romancing the Stone.”
At the time, Douglas was still married to his first wife, Diandra, though he said the two were separated. Douglas said he and Turner kept their affair a secret for 40 years out of respect to Diandra and Cameron, the son they had together.
“The chemistry I had with Kathleen Turner was so strong, audiences have been certain for years that we were in a relationship together while making the film,” Douglas wrote, while mentioning the four projects they worked on together between 1984 and 2018.
“We both denied it through ‘Romancing The Stone,’ ‘Jewel of the Nile,’ ‘War of the Roses,’ and even while doing press a few years ago for ‘The Kominsky Method,’” he continued, according to the excerpt.
“The official story went as follows: Yes, we confessed, we had amazing chemistry,” the “Fatal Attraction” and “Basic Instinct” star wrote. “Yes, we were both, as Kathleen said, ‘terrible flirts,’ and yes, we were both tempted, but nothing ever happened between us.”
“That was a lie,” added Douglas.
On Friday, the 72-year-old Turner issued a statement in response to Douglas’s revelation, telling People: “Good heavens what a fuss about something 40 years ago!I love Michael and I look forward to enjoying the book.”
Douglas is currently married to his second wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and they share two children. In his book, he also opens up “with refreshing candor” about his other “many, many romantic dalliances” — with Brenda Vaccaro, Jeanne Tripplehorn, the Times opinion writer Maureen Dowd and “an Israeli soldier he met on the side of the road,” according to the New York Times.
Douglas also had plenty of on-screen sex with other famous women — Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” Sharon Stone in “Basic Instinct” and Demi Moore in “Disclosure.” But on another sex-related topic, the son of Hollywood royalty — his father was Kirk Douglas — denies another longstanding rumor: That he went to rehab for sex addiction in 1992. In fact, Douglas said he went to rehab that year to kick a drug habit, and “he still resents being sold out by fellow patients,” the New York Times reported.
As for his genuine romance with Turner, it blossomed while the two co-starred in the comedy about a New York City romance novelist, Joan Wilder, who must travel to Colombia to rescue her sister from kidnappers. There, Wilder enlists the help of a dashing adventurer, Jack Colton, who is played by Douglas.
Douglas was a producer on the film, while Turner was a rising star with her breakthrough role as the femme fatal in “Body Heat” in 1981. When Douglas first met Turner for lunch to talk about joining him in “Romancing the Stone,” he said he was immediately smitten, according to the excerpt.
“”Kathleen was smart, funny, and sexy with a deep, sultry voice that became her signature,” Douglas said. “I instantly liked her, and we were immediately attracted to each other.”
At the time, according to the excerpt, Douglas’ marriage was in trouble. “Diandra and I were both having extramarital affairs, including my recent romance with Diane Thomas (‘Romancing the Stone’s screenwriter),” he said.
During the production and filming in Mexico, Douglas said he and Turner started out as co-stars and friends, but then became lovers.
“Following an exhausting day of shooting in the jungle, we’d go out and have a meal, or head out with the group and afterward I would sneak into her hotel room after everybody was asleep,” Douglas wrote. “There were no cameras in elevators, no assistants using cell phones to take pictures. As Jack and Joan were falling in love, Kathleen and I were keeping the chemistry alive. We kept our involvement hidden.”
But the romance ended when Diandra came to visit the set with their 5-year-old son Cameron, Douglas wrote.
“I was so happy to have my son there, but their arrival created another problem,” Douglas wrote. “While Bob and Danny had no clue about my affair with Kathleen, Diandra grew suspicious. A woman’s intuition, I suppose. At some point, she was alone with Kathleen and made it clear to her that we were still married. Her view of the terms of our separation was different from mine. This gave Kathleen pause. She didn’t want to interfere.”
Douglas said he was not eager to divorce Diandra even though their marriage had problems.
“We had our own son to think about,” Douglas wrote. “My parents’ divorce had really hurt me as a child, and Cameron was right about the same age I was when my parents split. After that visit, Kathleen and I ended things, and I went back to Diandra. I did it for Cameron, but we shouldn’t have gotten back together. After that first split it was never the same between us ever again.”
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