Michael Douglas claims in his new memoir that Debra Winger bit his arm and left teeth marks, ending her chance at a hit role.
At 82, the Oscar winner is airing decades of Hollywood stories in One Helluva Ride, and one of the sharpest concerns a dinner that went sideways. USA TODAY reports Douglas’s account of meeting Winger while casting the female lead in Romancing the Stone.
He wanted someone tough enough for a physically demanding shoot on a tight schedule. Winger was coming off strong buzz for Terms of Endearment. He also says word had reached him that she was difficult on that set and clashed hard with Shirley MacLaine.
They met over margaritas. Then, walking down the street afterward, she bit him.
Douglas does not describe a playful nip. He describes a full set of marks in his arm, and a decision made on the spot.
"I mean, she really bit me. Jesus, I had a whole set of teeth marks dug into my arm. We still had no answer from her, but that bite sealed the deal for me. No, thank you!"
He told his team she was gifted and still off the table. In his telling, the bite plus the set stories were enough. The Joan Wilder role went to Kathleen Turner instead.
USA TODAY says it reached out to Winger’s representative for comment. No response appears in the coverage.
Douglas also said that he and Turner had a passionate affair during production, while he was still married to Diandra Luker. Turner, now 72, answered the old rumor without a long defense.
"Good heavens what a fuss about something 40 years ago!"
She added that she loves Michael and looks forward to enjoying the book. She neither confirmed nor denied the claim. She treated it as ancient noise.
That is the pattern in a lot of star memoirs. The man publishes the story. The woman is left to clean up the headline.
Douglas is blunt about the era’s drug culture. He says that in Los Angeles he was “not exactly a saint,” running into singer Harry Nilsson, doing blow, staying out late, sleeping four hours, and heading back to the office.
One late-1970s night in New York stands out. After Saturday Night Live, he and Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner ran into O. J. Simpson. Wenner invited Simpson back to his apartment.
"At Jann's, O.J. whipped out a rolled dollar bill and offered us coke. Jann and I were looking at each other, Are we really doing this with O. J. Simpson?"
Douglas now calls cocaine ridiculous and useless. At the time, he says, it was how people extended the party and let off steam. He also says he learned the hard way not to drink or use while working, after nearly getting sick on the set of Running.
This was the same industry that slipped product to clients at the valet stand, if his account of a large talent agency is right. Excess was not a bug. It was the atmosphere.
Not every story is ugly. Douglas recalls sitting with Princess Diana at a London gala screening of Wall Street, whispering an apology for Gordon Gekko’s language, and watching her smile it off. At a private dinner afterward, he says, the tabloid version of her life fell away. He saw an unhappy marriage and a woman who wanted something else. He was headed toward divorce from Luker himself, finalized in 1995.
On the Basic Instinct set, he and Sharon Stone both refused body doubles. Stone, he says, dropped even the minimal patch and told the crew to stop pretending. During a scene that had to look intimate, his stubble left her upper thighs red and chafed. She asked him to go easy. He says he felt horrible. He also insists they were never actually intimate on camera.
With Glenn Close on Fatal Attraction, director Adrian Lyne had her talk dirty and play footsie during Douglas’s close-ups to jolt real reactions. Douglas calls Close sexy, at ease, and part of a partnership that felt special.
His second marriage gets a softer chapter. He met Catherine Zeta-Jones roughly three years after the Luker divorce. She lived in Los Angeles; he was based in New York. The courtship lasted nine months. Family members kept “happening” to be nearby at dinner. When the check came, she would say her brother could drive her home. Douglas finally understood she wanted to take it slow. He broke up with five other women. They married in 2000. They have two children, Dylan and Carys; he also has son Cameron from his first marriage.
He won the Oscar and Golden Globe for Wall Street, stayed steamed about getting no nomination for Fatal Attraction, battled throat cancer in 2010, and spent years working out a strained relationship with his father, Kirk Douglas. The book gathers the victories and the mess in one place.
Hollywood loves a redemption arc in the marketing meeting. The same town spent decades treating cocaine, casual cruelty, and disposable costars as standard set dressing, then sold the confessions in hardcover when the bill came due.
