Kathleen Turner responds to Michael Douglas revealing their secret affair

Kathleen Turner is breaking her silence on new revelations about her relationship with Michael Douglas.

THE Wall Street The star revealed he had a secret affair with the Peggy Sue got married actress during filming 1984 Romance the stone in his next memoir A hell of a ride. Now Turner is speaking out.

“Geez, what a fuss about something 40 years ago!” the actress told PEOPLE in a statement. “I love Michael and can’t wait to enjoy the book.”

In an extract from A hell of a ride published in PEOPLE, Douglas detailed his adventure with his co-star. “Kathleen was smart, funny and sexy with a deep, sultry voice that became her signature,” he wrote, noting that “things at home were going badly” with then-wife Diandra Douglas and explaining that they “both were having extramarital affairs” at the time.

Douglas said he was “still technically married, but separated” from Diandra when he went to Mexico to film. Romance the stone.

THE To fall The actor later starred alongside Turner in Romance the stone following The jewel of the Nile as well as The War of the Rosesand said their on-screen “chemistry” was “so strong” that “audiences had been certain for years that we had a relationship together while making” their first film together.

Douglas wrote that both actors “denied it” during several press tours. “The official story was: Yes, we admitted it, we had incredible chemistry. Yes, we were both, as Kathleen said, ‘terrible flirts,’ and yes, we were both tempted, but nothing ever happened between us.”

He then revealed: “It was a lie. It was a lie to protect my wife and my son, a lie that we told the world for 40 years.”

Douglas continued: “The truth is that during the production of Romance the stoneKathleen and I fell in love with each other and began a relationship. This was not a matter of nighttime flight; it arose naturally from our close collaboration, the pressure we were under, the extent to which we respected and cared for each other, and our attraction to each other. Like every other man in the world at the time, I was knocked down by Kathleen…”

THE Basic instinct The star said he would “sneak into her hotel room after everyone was asleep” and that “Kathleen and I kept the chemistry alive” as the characters fell in love. He also said their “hidden” relationship went undetected by director Robert Zemeckis and his partner Danny DeVito.

However, the relationship was put on ice when Douglas’ wife visited the production. “Diandra has become suspicious. It’s a woman’s intuition, I suppose,” he wrote. “At one point, she was alone with Kathleen and made it clear to her that we were still married. Her view on the terms of our separation was different from mine. This gave Kathleen pause. She didn’t want to interfere.”

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Douglas later returned to Diandra, but they eventually divorced in 1995 and he married Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2000. He remained friends with Turner for The jewel of the Nile And War of the Rosesand the two actors finally found each other in season 3 of The Kominsky method in 2021.

A hell of a ride comes out October 6.