Michael Douglas has finally admitted a secret affair with Kathleen Turner during the filming of “Romancing the Stone,” ending four decades of public denials in his new memoir.
Page Six reports that the 82-year-old Oscar winner describes the relationship in an excerpt from his upcoming book “One Helluva Ride,” shared by People ahead of the memoir’s release.
Douglas and Turner co-starred in the 1984 adventure hit, a jungle treasure-hunt story set in Colombia. He said that their connection moved from friendship to something far more private on set, kept hidden from director Robert Zemeckis, co-star Danny DeVito, and nearly everyone else.
At the time, Douglas was married to Diandra Luker, though the couple was separated. Turner had married real-estate developer Jay Weiss the same year. Both were, by Douglas’s own account, already crossing lines.
In the memoir, Douglas does not soften the details. He calls Turner “smart, funny, and sexy” and says she “knocked me sideways.”
He drafts:
“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 also notes he had a fling with the film’s screenwriter, Diane Thomas, before the relationship with Turner began. The pair maintained what he now calls an “official story” for years: strong chemistry, mutual temptation, and nothing more.
He addresses that public line directly:
“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 secret did not survive a visit from home. Luker and their young son, Cameron, came to the set in Mexico. Douglas said that his wife grew suspicious and confronted Turner.
He describes it this way:
“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.”
Turner later gave her own version. In a Guardian conversation years afterward, she said she believed they might have been falling in love until Luker arrived and made clear that Douglas was not available. Turner said she would not get involved in another woman’s marriage, and that ended it.
Douglas says he returned to Luker for their son’s sake. He also said that the reconciliation was a mistake and that the marriage never recovered. The couple divorced in 1995. Five years later he married Catherine Zeta-Jones; they have two children, Dylan and Carys.
Turner, for her part, has spoken often about the intensity on that set while stopping short of the full admission Douglas now makes. In a 2021 People interview she said she was “yearning” and that the wanting went both ways, but he was still married. In 2018 she called their bond “naughty.” In 2017 she said it was probably for the best they never ended up together, adding that she did not think he would have liked her finding her power as a wife. She has also called him a misogynist on more than one occasion.
Turner’s representative did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment on the memoir excerpt. Turner married Weiss in 1984; they had a daughter, Rachel, in 1987 and later divorced in 2007. Douglas and Turner reunited on screen the next year in “The Jewel of the Nile,” still publicly denying any off-screen romance.
The book reaches shelves this week. After forty years of the polished version, Douglas has chosen to put the private one in print.
Hollywood sells chemistry for a living. The bill for hiding it still comes due at home.
