Michael Douglas Admits Secret Kathleen Turner Romance

For forty years after the cameras stopped in Mexico, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner held a gentleman’s agreement to deny the affair that began on the locations of Romancing the Stone. In public they allowed only chemistry and flirtation. The story they told was that nothing had happened between them. Douglas now calls that a lie, one kept to protect his wife and son.

People magazine published the first excerpt from his memoir One Helluva Ride on Friday, October 2, 2026. The book names what they refused to confirm for four decades. Douglas, 82, has been married to Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000. Turner is 72.

After exhausting days of filming in the jungle, he would go out for dinner or join the group on the Mexican locations. Later, once everyone else was asleep, he would quietly slip into Kathleen Turner’s room. The production moved through Veracruz, Huasca de Ocampo and Xalapa under Robert Zemeckis, with Danny DeVito co-starring. The adventure comedy reached theaters in 1984. What was happening between them stayed concealed from the cast and crew.

“After an exhausting day filming in the jungle, we would go out for dinner or join the group, and later I would quietly slip into her hotel room once everyone else was asleep,” Douglas later wrote.

He was knocked sideways. “Kathleen was smart, funny and sexy, with a deep sultry voice that became her signature,” he wrote. “I instantly liked her and we were immediately attracted to each other.” The pull was mutual from the start. “Like every other guy in the world at the time, I was knocked sideways by Kathleen.”

What he left at home was already coming apart. Douglas had been married to Diandra Luker since 1977; they had a young son, Cameron. Turner was dating real-estate mogul Jay Weiss, who later became her husband. “Things at home were in a bad place,” Douglas wrote. “Diandra and I were both having extramarital affairs.”

On the shoot itself the attraction became a relationship. “The truth is that during the production of Romancing The Stone, Kathleen and I fell hard for each other and began a relationship,” he wrote. “We found each other first as friends, then as co-stars, and finally as lovers. It wasn't a brief fling. It developed naturally from the intensity of working so closely together, the pressure we were under, the respect and affection we shared, and the attraction between us.”

The romance on those Mexican locations had already been forced closed long before they struck the pact. Diandra Luker flew from Los Angeles to the Mexico set with their young son, Cameron. She confronted Kathleen Turner on the set and told her they were still married. “Diandra grew suspicious. A woman's intuition, I suppose,” Douglas wrote. After that visit, Douglas and Turner ended the relationship. He returned to Diandra. Their marriage continued until the divorce in 2000.

For the sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, released in 1985, Douglas and Turner sat across from each other and revised the script together. They traded pages back and forth, negotiated over lines, laughed at scenes, and pictured their characters going at each other in every way imaginable. As they rebuilt the movie, Douglas wrote, it felt a little like they were also repairing things between them, finally getting over everything that had come before. It felt good knowing they were back on solid ground.

They worked together again on The War of the Roses in 1989. Decades later Turner joined him on Netflix’s The Kominsky Method for its last two seasons, from 2019 through 2021. The friendship held after the affair had ended. What began in the intensity of the first production became a partnership that outlasted the nights they had kept hidden, and Douglas later asked her permission before putting the romance into the pages of the memoir that would finally name it.

A few years prior Kathleen Turner had given The Mail on Sunday the framing that kept any affair off the record. When People asked for her reaction to the memoir’s revelation she answered lightly. Good heavens, what a fuss. She loves Michael and looks forward to enjoying the book.

One Helluva Ride goes on sale October 6, 2026.