Michael Douglas has been married to Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000 and has opened up about his earlier romances

NEED TO KNOW

• Michael Douglas had several romantic relationships with fellow actors before marrying Catherine Zeta-Jones
• In his 2026 memoir One Helluva Ride, the Oscar winner opened up about some of the costars he was romantically involved with
• He was previously married to Diandra Luker for 18 years

Michael Douglas is an open book when it comes to his love life.

Shortly after the Fatal Attraction actor started his career, he entered into a romantic relationship with fellow actress Brenda Vaccaro. They dated for nearly six years before he married Diandra Luker in 1977. The couple were married for nearly two decades and welcomed a son, Cameron Douglas, in 1978, before splitting in 1995.

In his 2026 memoir, One Helluva Ride, Douglas spoke candidly about his affairs with his Romancing the Stone costar Kathleen Turner, Basic Instinct costar Jeanne Tripplehorn and Romancing the Stone writer Diane Thomas.

However, by the time Douglas saw Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones for the first time in 1998, he ended things with five other women to solely pursue the actress. The couple went on to marry in 2000 and welcome two children together, son Dylan and daughter Carys.

Here’s everything to know about Michael Douglas’ dating history.

Brenda Vaccaro

Douglas took his love life off-screen when he and Brenda Vaccaro played love interests in the 1971 drama, Summertree.

“He was a handsome colt, young colt,” Vaccaro recalled to CBS News in a 2021 interview. “He was really beautiful. We just went bingo! We liked each other very much.”

The One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest producer and the Once Is Not Enough actress lived together and had a “very simple” commitment ceremony without rings in her agent’s backyard.

“I used to call him my hippie-dippie, ‘cause his hair was here. He’d been in a commune in Santa Barbara,” she said, while adding, “He taught me how to roll joints that were fabulously-rolled. Man, the ends were tipped! I just remember I was in love with him. I loved him. He was wonderful.”

When asked why they never got married, Vaccaro said “it wasn’t the thing to do” at the time because of the “whole hippie kind of existence.”

Diandra Luker

The Oscar-winning actor married Diandra Luker when he was 32 years old, and she was 19 in 1977.

Douglas and Luker, who’s the daughter of an Austrian diplomat and had recently moved to the U.S. to attend Georgetown University, met at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. around the time of President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration.

“After the concert there was a reception upstairs to meet the president, and I looked across the room,” Douglas recalled to Rolling Stone in 1979. “You know, ‘across a crowded room,’ corny thing — and I saw Diandra and asked her to marry me three weeks later, and we got married two months after that.”

He added, “I fell in love instantaneously. I have not quite figured it out. It never happened to me before.”

Meanwhile, Luker didn’t know who Douglas was prior to their meeting and recalled thinking he “was very interesting” and “different.”

A year after tying the knot, Douglas and Luker welcomed son Cameron in December 1978.

Douglas and Luker were married for 18 years before separating in 1995 and finalizing their divorce five years later. He cited irreconcilable differences at the time, while Diandra later claimed that Douglas’ affairs played a role in the breakup.

Diane Thomas

A few years after marrying Luker, Douglas began working on the romantic comedy Romancing the Stone alongside writer Diane Thomas.

During that time, Douglas and Thomas engaged in an affair, he wrote in his 2026 memoir, One Helluva Ride.

“Things at home were in a bad place. Diandra and I were both having extramarital affairs, including my recent romance with Diane Thomas,” he claimed.

After the film became a blockbuster, Douglas bought Thomas a Porsche that her boyfriend Stephen Norman crashed in 1985, tragically killing her, per UPI.

Kathleen Turner

While he was filming Romancing the Stone, Douglas developed a deep connection with his on-screen love interest, Kathleen Turner. At the time, he was separated from Luker, but he and Turner still vehemently denied that their chemistry on-camera translated off.

“Kathleen was smart, funny, and sexy with a deep, sultry voice that became her signature,” he wrote in One Helluva Ride. “I instantly liked her, and we were immediately attracted to each other … The chemistry I had with Kathleen Turner was so strong, audiences have been certain for years that we were in a relationship together while making the film.”

“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. “It wasn’t a fly-by night affair; it grew naturally from how closely we were working together, how much pressure we were under, how much we respected and cared for one another, and how attracted we were to each other. Like every other guy in the world at the time, I was knocked sideways by Kathleen.”

The two continued seeing each other until Luker and Cameron visited him on set, and Luker — who had “a woman’s intuition” — confronted Turner and told her they were still married.

“At some point, she was alone with Kathleen and made it clear to her that we were still married,” he wrote. “Her view of the terms of our separation was different from mine. This gave Kathleen pause. She didn’t want to interfere.”

He and Turner subsequently ended their romantic relationship.

Jeanne Tripplehorn

In addition to candidly writing about his relationships with Thomas and Turner, Douglas also shut down speculation that he had a romantic relationship with his Basic Instinct costar Sharon Stone. Instead, he revealed he was involved with costar Jeanne Tripplehorn while making the hit 1992 film in San Francisco.

“They were so focused on a possible relationship between Sharon and me, they missed the real relationship happening between me and Jeanne,” Douglas recalled in One Helluva Ride, while adding they both “took great pains to hide [the relationship] from the cast and crew.”

Douglas noted that he and Tripplehorn “spent so many hours together, talking, really getting to know each other, enjoying each other’s company away from the set and everything else in the world.”

“Jeanne was a special lady,” Douglas told PEOPLE. “I know people with Basic Instinct were always kind of consumed with Sharon Stone and what might be going on.”

At the time, Douglas “assured” Tripplehorn that he was “formally separated” from Luker and the two were “both seeing other people on the side, living separate lives.”

“I was crazy about her,” he wrote of Tripplehorn. “But I was also just self-aware enough to know that the worst thing I could do at that moment after nearly 20 years of marriage was jump right into another serious relationship. My relationship with Jeanne lasted through production, then we went our separate ways. 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 said he hasn’t had “much connection with Jeanne” but called her to ask for her “permission” to share about their romance in his book, to which she obliged.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

After being officially separated from Luker for a few years, Douglas was casually dating various women.

“Just after my marriage, I had been seeing five other women,” he wrote in his memoir. “They knew I was recently separated and in the process of getting a divorce. I made sure they all lived in different cities, which felt like a respectful way to be non-monogamous.”

However, after seeing a screening of Zeta-Jones’ 1998 film The Mask of Zorro and meeting her a few weeks later, Douglas became infatuated with the actress. He asked his publicist to arrange a meeting between the two of them, and he quickly fell in love.

“I met her in the bar and was a total gentleman,” Douglas said during a 2016 appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show. Douglas asked her for a nightcap and then told her, “You know, I’m going to be the father of your children.”

He said she quipped back, “You know I’ve heard a lot about you, and I’ve seen a lot about you, and I think it’s time that I say goodnight.”

Despite the initial rejection, Zeta-Jones did reciprocate his feelings, which led Douglas to call off his romances with the five other women he was seeing.

“That day, I called each one to say I met somebody and would no longer be able to continue seeing them. They all took it well,” he wrote. “She was smart, funny, unpretentious, and, yes, breathtakingly beautiful. She just seemed so confident and self-assured, too.”

Douglas proposed to Zeta-Jones in 1999, and they got married in New York City in November 2000. A few months before they wed, the couple welcomed their first child together, son Dylan Douglas, in August. They expanded their family a few years later with their daughter Carys Zeta Douglas in April 2003.

Although Zeta-Jones and Douglas initially announced they were separating in August 2013, they rekindled and have been together ever since.

“A good sense of humor doesn’t hurt, number one,” he told PEOPLE of the secret to their marriage. “And talking things out. Never using the words ‘never’ or ‘always’ when you get angry with each other. And putting yourself in the other person’s position before you make your value judgment. But you gotta have fun. When I first met her, I said, ‘Do you like golf?’ She said, ‘I love golf.’ Well, I melted.”

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