Michael Douglas has finally admitted a secret affair with Kathleen Turner while filming "Romancing the Stone," ending more than 40 years of public denials the pair once repeated as fact.
The 82-year-old actor lays out the relationship in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, "One Helluva Ride," obtained by People and reported by Fox News. During production of the 1984 adventure hit, Douglas and Turner stopped pretending the on-screen spark stayed on screen.
For decades the co-stars told the public they shared "amazing chemistry" and were "both tempted," yet insisted they never acted on it. The memoir now says otherwise.
Douglas writes that he liked Turner at once. He describes her as smart, funny, and sexy, with the deep voice that became her signature, and says the pull was mutual from the start.
He was still technically married to Diandra Luker but separated, and he says things at home were already in a bad place. Both spouses, he adds, were having extramarital affairs.
Douglas puts the core admission in plain terms in the memoir excerpt.
In the book, Douglas writes:
"The truth is that during the production of Romancing the Stone, Kathleen and I fell hard for each other and began a relationship."
He stresses it was not a casual fling. The relationship, he says, grew from close work, pressure on the shoot, mutual respect, and strong attraction. "Like every other guy in the world at the time, I was knocked sideways by Kathleen," he writes.
After filming they would have dinners. Later they slipped into a hotel room once others were asleep. There were no elevator cameras and no phones ready to snap pictures, he notes. As their characters Jack and Joan fell in love on camera, the two actors kept the off-camera chemistry going. Director Bob Zemeckis and co-star Danny DeVito were left in the dark.
The arrangement ended when Luker arrived on set with their son, Cameron. She made clear to Turner that she and Douglas were still married. Douglas and Turner decided to break it off.
Douglas writes that after that first split, "it was never the same between us ever again."
Luker filed for divorce in 1995. The marriage, which had lasted 23 years, was finalized in 2000. That November, Douglas married actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. The couple later had two children, son Dylan and daughter Carys.
Douglas says he and Turner kept the affair quiet for years to shield Luker and their son. The public line about temptation without action held through the sequel and even a later reunion on "The Kominsky Method."
After the memoir excerpt circulated, Turner gave People a brief response. She did not litigate the details. She treated the episode as old news.
Turner said:
"Good heavens what a fuss about something 40 years ago! I love Michael and I look forward to enjoying the book."
"Romancing the Stone" made both stars even bigger names. Douglas, already carrying the weight of a famous Hollywood family, played rugged guide Jack Colton opposite Turner's romance novelist Joan Wilder. The movie's energy always fed the long-running rumor. For four decades the official answer stayed the same: chemistry, yes; a real affair, no.
Only now, with a memoir to sell and the main people in different chapters of life, has Douglas chosen to replace the old script with the one he says actually happened.
Hollywood spent forty years selling a tidy denial. The truth was messier, the marriage was already failing, and a child was part of the reason the secret finally had to end, late honesty does not erase the years of careful public fiction.
