Kathleen Turner has responded to the Michael Douglas affair revelation with considerably less alarm than the rest of Hollywood. Douglas has admitted that the co-stars became lovers while filming Romancing the Stone, ending four decades of carefully maintained denials.
“Good heavens what a fuss about something 40 years ago!” Turner, 72, said in a statement to People. “I love Michael and I look forward to enjoying the book.”
Douglas, 82, makes the disclosure in his memoir, One Helluva Ride. The admission confirms that the chemistry audiences saw between adventurer Jack Colton and romance novelist Joan Wilder in the 1984 blockbuster was not entirely a triumph of performance.
What happened during Romancing the Stone?
Douglas and Turner had long acknowledged their attraction but insisted that their relationship never became physical. In an excerpt from his memoir, Douglas finally abandons that version of events.
“The chemistry I had with Kathleen Turner was so strong, audiences have been certain for years that we were in a relationship together while making the film,” he writes.
The pair continued denying the rumours through later projects. Douglas now describes their official account in three efficient words: “That was a lie.” Forty years is a respectable lifespan for a Hollywood public-relations strategy, but apparently not an indefinite one.
Douglas says he was “knocked sideways” by Turner and that their relationship developed from friendship into a romance. At the time, he was still married to his first wife, Diandra Luker. He maintains that they were separated and both seeing other people when his relationship with Turner began.
While filming in Mexico, Douglas and Turner reportedly became skilled at keeping the romance private. They would eat together after long shooting days, sometimes with other cast and crew members, before Douglas visited Turner’s hotel room after everyone had gone to bed.
Even co-star Danny DeVito and director Robert Zemeckis apparently had no idea.
Why did the relationship end?
The affair ended after Luker arrived on set with Cameron Douglas, the couple’s son. According to Douglas, his estranged wife suspected something was happening and spoke privately with Turner.
Luker made clear that she still regarded herself and Douglas as married. Turner then decided she did not want to become involved in their relationship, while Douglas returned to the marriage for his son’s sake.
Luker filed for divorce in 1995, and the split became final in 2000. Douglas married Catherine Zeta-Jones later that year, and they remain together.
Turner had previously moved close to confirming the romance without quite crossing the line. In 2021, she said she had been “yearning” for Douglas and recalled the “wonderful sexual tension” between them.
“When you really, really know you want somebody, and I’m saying it went both ways, and you can’t have them,” she said at the time.
Two years later, Turner said she believed they “might have been falling in love”. She also recalled that Luker’s arrival on set made Douglas’s situation clear.
“So that ended that because I can’t get involved with another woman’s relationship,” Turner said.
Douglas’s memoir now establishes that the story had already progressed beyond mutual longing by then.
How did Douglas and Turner remain friends?
Despite the secret romance and its abrupt ending, Douglas and Turner maintained both a friendship and a successful working partnership.
They reunited for the 1985 sequel The Jewel of the Nile and starred together again in the 1989 black comedy The War of the Roses. Decades later, they shared the screen in the Netflix series The Kominsky Method.
Keeping an affair private for four decades is one achievement. Remaining friendly enough to keep working together may be the more unusual part.
Douglas says he asked Turner for permission before including their history in his memoir. Her response to the public disclosure suggests she is not especially troubled by it, even if everyone else has suddenly discovered an urgent interest in events from 1984.
One Helluva Ride is released on October 6, 2026.
