Michael Douglas admits 40-year lie about Kathleen Turner romance

Michael Douglas writes in a memoir out October 6 that he and Kathleen Turner were lovers during the 1983 Mexico shoot of Romancing the Stone, reversing 40 years of denials the two actors issued together.

The official story went as follows: 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.

The passage comes from One Helluva Ride, in an excerpt published by People on October 2. Douglas is 82 and Turner is 72. They played the adventurer Jack Colton and the romance novelist Joan Wilder in the 1984 hit, and made two more films together afterwards.

What the excerpt says

Douglas describes meeting Turner, then a rising actress, as he looked for someone to play opposite him. He writes that she was "smart, funny, and sexy with a deep, sultry voice that became her signature," and that the two were immediately attracted to each other.

His first marriage was already in trouble. Douglas writes that he and his then-wife, Diandra Douglas, were both having extramarital affairs, including his romance with Diane Thomas, the screenwriter of Romancing the Stone, and that Diandra constantly asked him to change, which created enormous problems between them. Cameron, their young son, felt the strain in his absence, and he left for Mexico "still technically married, but separated."

The relationship grew out of the work, he writes. Douglas describes finding each other "first as friends, then as co-stars, and finally as lovers," under the pressure of a demanding location shoot, and says he was "knocked sideways" by Turner. After dinner they would wait until the rest of the cast and crew had gone to bed before he went to her hotel room.

Neither the director, Robert Zemeckis, nor their co-star Danny DeVito knew, Douglas writes. The two kept the same line in public for decades, denying any romance through Romancing the Stone, its sequel The Jewel of the Nile, their later film The War of the Roses and press interviews a few years ago for the series The Kominsky Method, in which they appeared together.

Oh I was yearning, babe, but he was still married... It was that wonderful sexual tension, you know?

Douglas reproduces that answer in the book and then sets it aside. The public version, he writes, was "a lie meant to protect my wife and son, a lie we told the world for 40 years."

How it ended in Mexico

Diandra Douglas flew to the location partway through filming with Cameron. Her husband writes that he was happy to have his son there and that their arrival created another problem, because while Zemeckis and DeVito had no idea about the affair, his wife grew suspicious.

At some point, Douglas writes, Diandra was alone with Turner and made clear that the two of them were still married. He puts it down to a woman's intuition, and writes that his wife's view of the terms of their separation was different from his. That gave Turner pause, and she did not want to interfere.

The relationship ended after that visit and Douglas went back to his wife. He writes that he did it for Cameron, who was about the age he had been when his own parents divorced, and that the reconciliation was a mistake, because after the first split things were never the same between him and Diandra.

Douglas and Diandra divorced in 2000, the same year he married Catherine Zeta-Jones, to whom he is still married, according to Hola.

What Turner has said

Turner has talked publicly about being drawn to Douglas before now. In a 2018 appearance on ITV's Loose Women she said she had been "feeling rather romantic towards Michael" while making the film, and that she had believed he was separated while she was single, Hola reported. Her answer at the time left the romance unconsummated.

"You don't mess with other women's marriages," she said. In a 2018 Guardian interview she described the two of them as having "great chemistry" and again said she had understood Douglas to be separated from Diandra while she was unattached.

The memoir changes the sequence. In Turner's telling the attraction stopped when Douglas's wife appeared on set; in his, the two were already together by the time Diandra reached Mexico, and the visit ended a relationship that was under way.

The pair worked together again on The Jewel of the Nile and The War of the Roses, and reunited decades later on the series The Kominsky Method.

How the film came together

Douglas produced Romancing the Stone as well as starring in it, and was looking for a female lead when he met Turner. She took the part of Joan Wilder opposite his Jack Colton, in a film Zemeckis directed and which was shot largely on location.

Turner was not the studio's first choice. Debra Winger was the original pick for Joan Wilder, Eastern Eye reported, and Douglas has said separately that a dinner meeting with Winger went wrong, claiming she bit him on the arm hard enough to break the skin, after which he refused to go ahead with her in the role.

Romancing the Stone earned more than $115 million worldwide, Eastern Eye reported, and began a screen partnership that carried both actors through the rest of the decade.

Turner won a Golden Globe for Romancing the Stone and was nominated for a Tony for a Broadway run in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Eastern Eye reported. She continued acting after the 1980s and appeared alongside Anna Faris in the 2022 film The Estate, Hello reported.

Turner married the real estate developer Jay Weiss in 1984, the year Romancing the Stone was released, and the couple divorced in 2007, Hola reported. Their daughter, Rachel, was born in 1987, and Turner still calls Weiss her best friend, according to Hello.

Douglas, a two-time Academy Award winner, has been married to Zeta-Jones since 2000, Hello reported. The published accounts of the excerpt carry no response from Diandra Douglas.

What remains unclear

Douglas asked Turner for permission before telling the story publicly, TMZ reported, and he maintains a strong relationship with his former co-star.

No statement from Turner appears in the published accounts of the excerpt. One Helluva Ride goes on sale October 6.