After four decades, Michael Douglas admits his secret relationship with Kathleen Turner

Michael Douglas has revealed after four decades that he had a secret relationship with his co-star in the film “Romancing the Stone”, Kathleen Turner.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, One Helluva Ride, the actor recounts the romance that began during the filming of the movie in 1984 and about which the two had stayed silent for years.

At the time, Douglas was married to Diandra Luker, although the couple were separated. According to the actor, both of them had begun extramarital relationships. Before becoming close to Turner, Douglas had also had a flirtation with the film’s screenwriter, Diane Thomas.

Douglas writes that he and Turner were immediately drawn to each other and fell “head over heels” in love, but decided to keep the relationship secret from the other members of the crew, including Danny DeVito and director Robert Zemeckis.

“At first we were friends, then colleagues and in the end lovers,” Douglas writes, recounting that after long days of filming in the jungle he would secretly go to Turner’s hotel room.

But the relationship ended when Diandra Luker went to Mexico together with their son, Cameron, and confronted Turner. Luker made it clear to the actress that she and Douglas were still married and that she saw their separation agreement differently.

The conversation made Turner step back, as she did not want to interfere in their marriage. Douglas went back to Diandra, saying he did it for their son Cameron, but later admitted that they should not have reunited.

“After that first separation, things between us were never the same again,” he writes.

Douglas and Luker finally divorced in 1995. Five years later, the actor married Catherine Zeta-Jones, with whom he has two children. Turner, meanwhile, was married to Jay Weiss from 1984 to 2007, and together they have a daughter.

Despite their secret relationship, Douglas and Turner continued to work together. They starred in the sequel to “Romancing the Stone”, “The Jewel of the Nile”, as well as in “The War of the Roses” and “The Kominsky Method”.

Douglas explains that for decades the two of them had maintained an “official version” of the story, according to which between them there had been only chemistry, flirtation and attraction, but nothing more. According to him, that story was kept to protect his former wife and his son Cameron.

Turner had also spoken before about the attraction between them. In 2021, she admitted that she had had feelings for Douglas, while in a 2023 interview she said she believed the two of them might have been falling in love, but everything ended when Diandra arrived on the film set.

Michael Douglas’s memoir, One Helluva Ride, is published on Tuesday.