Michael Douglas Finally Confesses: The Kathleen Turner Romance He Denied for 40 Years

For four decades, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner told the world their Romancing the Stone chemistry was purely professional. His new memoir says otherwise. In One Helluva Ride, Douglas writes that he and Turner fell hard for each other while filming the 1984 adventure classic, a relationship he describes as mutual and immediate. The timing was complicated. Douglas was separated from his then-wife Diandra Luker, but the two were still legally married when he left for the Mexico shoot.

The affair ended when Luker visited the set with their son Cameron, then five, and made it clear to Turner that she was still very much the wife. Douglas returned to Diandra, a decision he now calls a mistake in the book. He and Turner denied everything through the years, including as recently as 2021 during press for The Kominsky Method. In the memoir, he doesn’t dodge it.“That was a lie,”he writes.“A lie meant to protect my wife and son, a lie we told the world for 40 years.”

So the sparks that made Romancing the Stone one of the most electric movies of the decade? Turns out they weren’t scripted. The memoir drops Tuesday, October 6, and it’s already one of the most talked-about Hollywood reveals of the year. What movie couple’s off-screen chemistry had you convinced something was going on? Tell us on our socials.