4 Steamy On-Set Affairs Michael Douglas Admitted To In His Memoir

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Michael Douglas is spilling all the tea in his new memoir, "One Helluva Ride," including some juicy stories about his steamy on-set affairs with some of his leading ladies — including one particularly surprising co-star. Of course, the actor is now happily married to his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, and has been since November 2000. But once upon a time, Douglas had quite the reputation for being a ladies' man, and he's ready to finally tell it all — starting with his "Adam at 6 A.M." co-star, Lee Purcell.

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According to Douglas, he and Purcell had a "passionate affair" during the filming of "Adam at 6 A.M.," in which they played love interests Adam and Jerri. At the time, he was still a bachelor and found himself increasingly drawn to his leading lady. "As filming progressed, my relationship with Lee changed and we became lovers," he recalled (via Entertainment Weekly). However, there was one issue. "Our intimate relationship was complicated by the fact that she was married," Douglas revealed. "We had to keep it a secret from the cast, crew, the people in the town we were filming in, and of course her husband."

He remembered Purcell as incredibly talented and extremely charismatic. "She was beautiful, a dancer, and she did her own stunts," Douglas wrote. She was also, according to him, "smart, funny and, in many ways, a rebel like me." Eventually, however, they decided to end their relationship, and Douglas would go on to meet his first wife, Diandra Luker, and marry her in 1977. But his days of playing the field weren't over.

In his tell-all, Michael Douglas also came clean about his short-lived affair with screenwriter Diane Thomas while he and Diandra Luker were going through a rough patch in their marriage. "Things at home were in a bad place," the actor said (via People). "Diandra and I were both having extramarital affairs, including my recent romance with Diane Thomas."

He and Thomas worked together on the 1984 adventure film "Romancing the Stone," during which their relationship became romantic at some point. "The truth was my marriage was in trouble and neither one of us was happy," Douglas wrote, referring to his ex-wife (via Entertainment Weekly). "Did I step outside my marriage? Yes, I did." But, as Douglas was quick to note, so did Luker. "This wasn't a case of her sitting at home in her nightgown waiting by the telephone for me to call and check in. She was out with her friends and having romantic interludes with people, too," he noted.

Unfortunately, Thomas died in a tragic accident in Topanga, California, just weeks before "The Jewel of the Nile," the sequel to "Romancing the Stone," came out in 1985. Per reports, she and two others were riding in a Porsche Carrera that was just gifted to her by Douglas for her uncredited work on the script for "The Jewel of the Nile." She was only 39 years old.

In what is perhaps one of the book's biggest revelations, Michael Douglas confirmed what everyone had always suspected about him and his former leading lady Kathleen Turner, saying they developed romantic feelings for each other while filming "Romancing the Stone" in Mexico. For years, he and Turner swore they never dated despite their strong onscreen chemistry, which Douglas now admits wasn't totally true. "Yes, we confessed, we had amazing chemistry. Yes, we were both, as Kathleen said, 'terrible flirts,' and yes, we were both tempted, but nothing ever happened between us," he wrote (via People). "That was a lie."

After a grueling day on set, he and Turner would go out to dinner with the rest of the cast before sneaking off to Turner's hotel room once Douglas made sure that everyone else had gone to bed. Nobody on the set except them knew; not even Douglas' former roommate and close pal, Danny DeVito. There was one just one problem, though: he was still married to Diandra Luker, and soon things came crashing down when his wife decided to pay them an on-set visit along with their son, Cameron.

As Douglas recalled, "I was so happy to have my son there, but their arrival created another problem. While Bob [Zemeckis, the director] and Danny had no clue about my affair with Kathleen, Diandra grew suspicious. A woman's intuition, I suppose." She confronted Turner, who didn't want to get involved in their marriage. In the end, he chose his wife over Turner, which Douglas would later realize was a huge mistake. "We shouldn't have gotten back together," he said, referring to his ex-wife. "After that first split it was never the same between us ever again."

Just when everyone thought Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone had a thing for each other while filming "Basic Instinct," the actor revealed in his memoir that it was actually their other co-star, Jeanne Tripplehorn — who played his therapist and other love interest, Dr. Beth Garner — that he developed feelings for. "Everyone [assumed] something was going on between Sharon and me. They were so focused on a possible relationship between Sharon and me, they missed the real relationship happening between me and Jeanne," Douglas said (per Entertainment Weekly). He was completely smitten. "The truth is, I fell very hard for Jeanne despite our nearly 20-year age difference," he added (via Page Six). "In fact, I was ready to officially leave my wife for Jeanne. I was crazy about her."

During filming, he and Tripplehorn would spend a lot of nights "talking" and "really getting to know each other [...] away from the set and everything else in the world," according to his book (via People). However, despite their strong connection, she was careful not to cross that line with Douglas, knowing that he and Diandra Luker were still married on paper. By this point, the exes had been living completely separately and "were both seeing other people on the side." Douglas shared this information with Tripplehorn, who just couldn't shake the thought of going out with a married man. Ultimately, Douglas and Luker got divorced in 1995, but that was that. He and Tripplehorn went their separate ways as soon as production for "Basic Instinct" wrapped. That said, "I will always think of her as an amazing actress and a truly terrific woman that I was very fortunate to spend time with," Douglas said of his co-star.