Michael Douglas has revealed he had a secret affair with one of his Basic Instinct co-stars while still married to his first wife.
The Hollywood actor, 82, has admitted he fell ‘very hard’ for Jeanne Tripplehorn while making the controversial 1992 erotic thriller, in which she played police psychologist Dr Beth Garner.
The confession comes just days after Douglas revealed another long-hidden on-set romance, admitting he and Kathleen Turner became lovers while filming Romancing the Stone eight years earlier.
Douglas has opened up about both relationships in his new memoir, One Helluva Ride.
Basic Instinct famously paired him with Sharon Stone, whose performance as murder suspect Catherine Tramell opposite his detective Nick Curran made the pair one of the most talked-about screen couples of the 1990s.
But despite years of speculation about whether their chemistry continued away from the cameras, Douglas says it was actually Tripplehorn who captured his attention.
‘The truth is, I fell very hard for Jeanne despite our nearly 20-year age difference,’ he writes.
At the time, Douglas was 47 and still married to Diandra Luker, while Tripplehorn was 28 and unmarried.
According to Douglas, Tripplehorn was initially reluctant to become involved with a married man, but he told her he and Luker had formally separated.
He describes his marriage as having been troubled for years, claiming the couple had repeatedly split and reconciled and were by then largely living separate lives and seeing other people.
Douglas and Luker, who shared son Cameron, were still attempting to make their marriage work for their family, but he says both knew it was nearing its end.
His feelings for Tripplehorn nevertheless became serious enough that he considered leaving the marriage and pursuing a future with her. Douglas ultimately decided that moving directly from his 15-year marriage into another committed relationship would be the ‘worst thing’ he could do.
The pair kept their romance quiet throughout production, with Douglas claiming even their Basic Instinct colleagues were unaware they were together.
Their real-life relationship also made filming intimate scenes between their characters unexpectedly awkward.
Douglas recalls Tripplehorn repeatedly laughing with nerves while they attempted to shoot one particularly intense encounter between Nick and Beth.
The scene, which depicts aggressive sex between the characters, was carefully rehearsed beforehand, Douglas says, with the pair agreeing on what would happen despite intimacy coordinators not yet being a standard presence on Hollywood sets.
He also recalls checking on Tripplehorn between takes while filming a moment in which his character bites hers.
Their relationship continued for the duration of the shoot but ended once production finished.
‘But 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 writes.
He says the former couple had little contact in the decades that followed, but he contacted Tripplehorn before publishing the story and asked for her permission to discuss their relationship in his memoir.
According to Douglas, she agreed.
Douglas and Luker eventually separated in 1995 before divorcing in 2000.
That same year, he married Welsh actor Catherine Zeta-Jones, 57, with whom he shares children Dylan, 26, and Carys, 23.
Tripplehorn, now 63, went on to marry actor Leland Orser in 2000, with the couple welcoming son August two years later.
The revelation follows Douglas’s admission that another famous piece of supposed on-screen chemistry had also crossed over into real life.
In One Helluva Ride, he confirms for the first time that he and Kathleen Turner had an affair while making 1984 adventure hit Romancing the Stone.
Douglas was married to Luker at the time, while Turner was dating her future husband Jay Weiss.
For decades, the co-stars publicly maintained that they had been intensely attracted to one another but stopped short of having an affair.
Douglas now says that was a story they agreed to tell to protect his family.
He writes that he and Turner ‘fell hard for each other’ during the film’s production in Mexico, describing their relationship as something more substantial than a fleeting fling.
The affair ended after Luker arrived on set with the couple’s then-four-year-old son Cameron, but Douglas and Turner remained close professionally.
They reunited for 1985 sequel The Jewel of the Nile before starring together again in 1989 black comedy The War of the Roses.
Turner, 72, has since responded to Douglas finally making their relationship public and appears untroubled by the revelation.
‘Good heavens, what a fuss about something 40 years ago!’ she told People.
‘I love Michael and I look forward to enjoying the book.’