Michael Douglas has confirmed what he and Kathleen Turner spent 40 years denying: they had an affair while filming “Romancing the Stone” in 1984, and the public denials were a lie.
The admission appears in an excerpt from Douglas’s upcoming memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” shared by People on Friday. Douglas, 82, writes that he and Turner became lovers during the shoot, sneaking visits after the cast fell asleep on location.
“We found each other first as friends, then as co-stars and finally as lovers. Following an exhausting day of shooting in the jungle … I would sneak into her hotel room after everybody was asleep,” Douglas wrote.
At the time, Douglas was married to Diandra Luker, with whom he had a young son, Cameron. The couple was separated and, Douglas says, both were having extramarital affairs. The relationship with Turner ended when Luker and Cameron visited the set and Luker confronted Turner directly.
“The conversation gave Kathleen pause because she didn’t want to interfere,” Douglas wrote, and the two ended the affair. “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.”
Douglas says he and Turner then agreed to protect Luker and Cameron with a false story that nothing physical had happened between them.
“Yes, we confessed, we had amazing chemistry. 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.”
Turner, 72, stuck to that script for decades in public interviews. On “Larry King Live” in 2008, a caller asked if she and Douglas had “a relationship outside of working.” “Well, let me — only a good friendship,” Turner said, adding she’d been “rather attracted” to him before Luker’s arrival “put an end to that.”
She repeated versions of the same story for years. On “Good Morning America” in 2018: “I wanted to. I thought we were falling madly in love…” but nothing happened because Luker arrived and made clear the marriage was intact. The same year, on a British chat show, she described feeling “rather romantic towards Michael” but said, “You don’t mess with other women’s marriages.”
In 2021, Turner told the Los Angeles Times, “Heavens, I certainly had a crush on Michael during ‘Romancing,'” saying Douglas had told her he was separated before Luker’s arrival “killed that.” She told People that year she was “yearning, babe, but he was still married,” calling their chemistry “wonderful sexual tension.”
Asked in 2023 how far things actually went, Turner deflected: “None of your business.”
Douglas and Luker divorced in 2000. Douglas later married Catherine Zeta-Jones, with whom he has son Dylan, 26, and daughter Carys, 23. Turner married Jay Weiss in 1984; they divorced in 2007 and share daughter Rachel, 38.
Douglas and Turner went on to work together repeatedly, appearing in 1985’s “The Jewel of the Nile,” 1989’s “The War of the Roses,” and decades later in Netflix’s “The Kominsky Method.”
