Inside Michael Douglas’ New Memoir: Secret Affairs, On-Set Battles, and Family Secrets

Movie stars are an endangered species. They still exist, of course. Their beautiful faces still fill 50-foot screens, beaming at us. Yet there is a shortage of, for example, Michael Douglas. A man who, over the decades, has played a US president, a troubled detective and a Wall Street tycoon so convincingly that the FBI recruited the actor to direct a PSA for investment bankers about the dangers of financial fraud.

The day before my meeting with Michael Douglas on Zoom, I had trouble sleeping. I want to be well rested before meeting the leading man – perhaps one of the last leading men of a Hollywood era that seemed limitless. What do I mean by that? He will tell you. His new memoir details his film career as a prolific producer and actor, as well as his affair with his “Romancing the Stone” co-star Kathleen Turner, mudslides in Mexico, cocaine snorting with OJ Simpson, meetings with Princess Diana and screaming matches with Paul Verhoeven that ended in blood. In short: the life of a movie star.

“People say to me: Michael Douglas. When I see your name, I don’t know what I’m going to get, but I know it’s going to be good,” says Michael Douglas.

(David Urbanke / For Time)

In the middle of our conversation, something unexpected happens: Douglas reveals that he doesn’t really consider himself a movie star. After a slight reluctance, he elaborates. Instead, Douglas considers himself a chameleon.

“People say to me: Michael Douglas. When I see your name, I don’t know what I’m going to get, but I know it’s going to be good,” he says.

He speaks from his home in New York. Behind him is a moody 18th-century orientalist painting, the scene of which is too blurry for me to make out. His smiling face — which, like most American moviegoers, I had watched from 50 feet up in the dark — glows with warmth even on my laptop screen. It seems unnatural even to see it in miniature.

To be clear: Michael Douglas is a movie star, whether or not he wants to do it via Zoom. It’s in his blood. His father, Kirk Douglas – born Issur Danielovitch to Russian Jewish immigrant parents – was a legendary actor whose shadow Douglas struggled to escape, as he details in the opening chapters of his memoir. He spent his childhood on film sets, watching his father train with iconic directors like Stanley Kubrick. Michael Douglas was also subject to outbursts of violence and anger. “Dad’s volatility kept us in suspense,” he wrote. He felt stifled by his father’s legacy, often hoping to shake off the title of “son of Kirk Douglas.”

Early in his career, Douglas left his starring role on the TV show “The Streets of San Francisco” after producing his first film, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which became a smash hit. In this film, he had to tell his father the terrible news that he was too old to play the lead role – essentially, kicking his father out of his dream role. It was a betrayal. Instead, the role went to Jack Nicholson, who would later win an Oscar for his humanizing portrayal of Randle McMurphy. The film won several Academy Awards, launching Douglas’ career as a heavyweight producer and then actor. Escaping the shadow of being Kirk Douglas’ son has been a lifelong struggle for the actor.

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Sometimes inheritance can be a burden. In his own life, Douglas recounts how he was a distracted father and husband who lost sight of his son, Cameron Douglas. During Cameron’s childhood, Douglas was elsewhere – on location in the Mexican jungle in “Romancing the Stone” and then in a disastrous film production in Morocco for “Jewel of the Nile” that included a fatal plane crash that resulted in the deaths of three crew members. To cope with the hectic pace of show business, Douglas sought refuge in women, cocaine and work.

Cameron’s troubled youth reached a crescendo when he was sentenced to five years in federal prison for drug trafficking, with additional time for drug possession – ultimately serving seven years. This was extremely painful for Douglas, who also struggled with addiction and had sought treatment to set an example for his son.

In a final chapter, he recalls confiding in Rob Reiner, who also had a son struggling with addiction issues. In the memoir, Douglas discusses the murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner in December 2025; their son Nick was charged with murder. “We both had sons who had serious drug problems and we were both, at times, at the end of our rope.” Douglas writes. “It was a heartbreaking confessional for us, but I know we brought each other some comfort during difficult times.”

Why painfully go through the history of cinema, turning over every stone and every wound, in a memoir of almost 500 pages? Because, according to Douglas, it’s time.

“The ’80s can be a good time to share,” says the actor, who recently turned 82. “People who are interested in film, we give them some insight into the process, and maybe they might learn something. For others, it’s just gossip.” His fight against stage 4 oral cancer highlighted the contours of his life, accentuated by seven weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. His official diagnosis was cancer of the tongue, but he told the public that he had throat cancer, hoping to silence speculation in the press about the possibility of disfigurement – ​​and, more particularly, the prospect of losing his tongue. It was isolating, and Shane Salerno – the co-author of the memoir – stuck by Douglas.

Michael Douglas.

(David Urbanke / For Time)

As much as Douglas’ memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” is a revealing and delightful account of a life in show business, it is also a love letter to California — a place where Douglas spent much of his adult life, starting at UC Santa Barbara. The university’s travel brochure said: campus by the sea. “I remember the cover was a guy walking on the beach with a surfboard, two girls in two-piece swimsuits. In 1963, I had never seen a two-piece swimsuit in the East.” It was sold.

The Californian years left their mark. Douglas is still, at heart, a hippie. Raised in the rigid prep culture of the East Coast, he was reborn under the California sun. “I became a hippie, influenced by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, hallucinatory drugs and the world that existed in early 60s San Francisco.”

Strangely, Douglas says some of the utopian feelings of the 1960s are returning. “People are starting to look back and realize how important family is: cooperation, sharing,” he says. “Socialism is not a four-letter word or something terrible. There are other things to pursue in life than just making money.”

“Your 80s can be a good time to share,” says Michael Douglas.

(David Urbanke / For Time)

Like the characters he plays, Douglas is far from perfect. He admits he struggled – in his first marriage, then later as a father. After marrying Diandra Luker, Douglas was unfaithful and had affairs with co-stars including Turner on the set of “Romancing the Stone” in the Mexican jungle. The two men denied any relationship for years. Today, with Turner’s blessing, Douglas writes about their involvement in his memoir.

Before Turner, there was Diane Thomas, the waitress turned screenwriter of the film, with whom Douglas had an affair. Thomas’ life was tragically cut short in a car accident involving a Porsche that Douglas had given him.

And then there were the rumors. On the set of “Basic Instinct,” some speculated that Douglas and Sharon Stone were having an affair. This was not the case, he explains. Douglas found himself locked in a power struggle with director Verhoeven, who, during a particularly heated argument with the actor, suffered a burst artery in his nose, turning the confrontation into a bloody scene. Douglas, meanwhile, was involved with another co-star, Jeanne Tripplehorn. “They were so focused on a possible relationship between Sharon and me that they missed the real relationship that was happening between me and Jeanne,” he wrote.

When he and his current wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, made it official, Douglas went to the other room to call five other women in case of a breakup. (At this point in the memoir, Douglas has enough goodwill to make this seem charming.) “From the moment I met Catherine and we formed our family, I was a new man,” he writes.

The memoir also enshrines Douglas’ petty grievances in show business: a mended grudge against David Letterman, a TV co-star who stole his longtime girlfriend, and a bouquet sent to Julia Roberts to apologize for his drunken antics. In the words of Douglas: “There are two or three people with whom I share my hostilities. » He clashed with Brian De Palma, who was originally attached to direct “Fatal Attraction” and tried to get Douglas fired. De Palma underestimated Douglas and was replaced by Adrian Lyne. Years later, De Palma apologized, but Douglas rejected them.

It’s impossible to tell the story of Douglas’ career without the women he met. The films he championed helped establish a new breed of female protagonists – in all their powerful, morally ambiguous and deranged glory. “An actress was not allowed to play a villain,” he says. In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the actor had a hard time casting Nurse Ratched. “A lot of leading actresses turned down the role until we found Louise Fletcher, who went on to win an Oscar.”

For Glenn Close, Sharon Stone and Kathleen Turner, alongside Michael…