Michael Douglas confirms a long-secret affair with Kathleen Turner on the “Romancing the Stone” set, after both denied it for more than 40 years.
Fox News reported that the 82-year-old actor lays out the relationship in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” obtained by People. He and Turner starred as Jack Colton and Joan Wilder in the 1984 adventure film and spent decades batting down the same rumor.
Douglas now says the chemistry was real. He said that they fell hard for each other during production and began a relationship while he was still technically married to Diandra Luker, though he describes the couple as separated and says things at home were already in a bad place.
In the memoir, Douglas drops the old public line. For years the pair said they had amazing chemistry and were tempted, but never acted on it. He now calls that version incomplete.
"The truth is that during the production of Romancing the Stone, Kathleen and I fell hard for each other and began a relationship."
He adds that it was not a fly-by-night fling. It grew, he says, from close work, pressure, mutual respect, and attraction.
Douglas describes the practical side of keeping it quiet. After filming, the two went to dinner together. He also said that he would sneak into her hotel room after everybody was asleep.
He notes the era helped them hide it. “There were no cameras in elevators, no assistants using cell phones to take pictures,” he said. Director Bob Zemeckis and co-star Danny DeVito were left in the dark.
Douglas praises Turner in plain terms. He calls her smart, funny, and sexy, with the deep, sultry voice that became her signature, and says he instantly liked her and felt immediate attraction. He also said that, like every other guy in the world at the time, he was knocked sideways by her.
On screen, Jack and Joan were falling in love. Off screen, he says, he and Turner were keeping that chemistry alive.
Douglas says both he and Luker were having extramarital affairs while their marriage frayed. He left for the film still legally married but separated. The secret, he says, was meant in part to protect Luker and their son, Cameron.
The arrangement did not last. Luker visited the set with Cameron and made clear to Turner that she and Douglas were still married. Douglas and Turner then decided to end the relationship.
Hollywood has seen plenty of long-denied on-set romances resurface years later, and this one followed a familiar pattern of public silence. They kept denying it through the sequel years and even through a later reunion on “The Kominsky Method.”
Luker filed for divorce in 1995. The split was finalized in 2000 after 23 years of marriage. Douglas said that after that first split it was never the same between them again.
In November 2000 he married Catherine Zeta-Jones. The couple later welcomed son Dylan, now 26, and daughter Carys, now 23.
After the memoir excerpt circulated, Turner gave People a brief statement rather than a lengthy rebuttal or confirmation of every detail.
"Good heavens, what a fuss about something 40 years ago! I love Michael, and I look forward to enjoying the book."
She did not litigate the past in public. She treated a four-decade secret as old news and wished the book well.
Douglas waited until his eighties to put the affair on the page. The film that made the rumor famous is now more than 40 years old. The denials lasted just as long. The memoir finally matches the on-screen heat with an off-screen admission, and the people who lived it are left to sort out what that candor is worth.