For more than 30 years, Hollywood had the wrong woman.
Michael Douglas writes in his new memoir that he did have an affair during the 1992 shoot of “Basic Instinct,” but it was with Jeanne Tripplehorn, not Sharon Stone, as Hollywood has assumed for decades.
Douglas, 82, published “One Helluva Ride” on Oct. 6, 2026. The book runs roughly 500 pages. His answer flips a rumor that has followed the steamy thriller since it hit theaters.
Paul Verhoeven directed the film, which pitted Douglas’ detective against Stone’s murder suspect in a cat-and-mouse thriller. Its racy scenes made it a box-office smash. The heat between the two leads fueled years of speculation about a real-life romance. Douglas writes that attention landed on the wrong pair.
Tripplehorn played a police psychologist and the love interest to Douglas’ detective. She is now 63. At the movie’s opening she was 28 and unmarried. Douglas was 47 and still married to his first wife, Diandra Luker.
A Secret Kept From the Whole Set
Douglas writes that the two spent long stretches talking and getting to know each other away from the production in San Francisco. By his account, they went to considerable lengths to keep the relationship from the cast and crew.
Tripplehorn was unwilling to become involved with a married man, Douglas writes. That condition lifted, by his account, after he told her that he and Luker had formally separated, that each was seeing other people and that the marriage was finished.
“The truth is, I fell very hard for Jeanne despite our nearly 20-year age difference,” Douglas wrote. He added: “With Jeanne, the passion you see onscreen reflects the genuine passion of our brief affair.”
He writes that he was prepared to leave his wife for her. What stopped him, he writes, was knowing that jumping straight into another serious relationship after nearly 20 years of marriage would have been a big mistake. The romance lasted through production, and the two went separate ways at the end of the shoot. He writes that he has a warm memory of her, as both a performer and a person.
The Scene That Left a Mark
The memoir describes an intense sex scene the pair filmed, in which Douglas tears Tripplehorn’s clothes and bites her. She told him he could really bite her, according to accounts of the book.
Douglas told Page Six that he talked with Tripplehorn before putting the affair in the book, and that she was fine with it. He said he had not seen her in years. He said such chapters are not merely about affairs, but about significant friendships formed through work.
Tripplehorn later starred in “Waterworld.” She married actor Leland Orser, now 66, in 2000. The couple have a son.
Douglas married Catherine Zeta-Jones, 57, the same year. Luker filed for divorce in 1995, and the split was finalized in 2000. Douglas and Zeta-Jones have two children, Dylan and Carys.
Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Surprising Reaction
Zeta-Jones joked on NBC’s “Today” that she has “no intention of reading about him.” Later, on “The View,” she said, “I’m going to read it.”
On Oct. 14, she posted the book’s cover on Instagram to celebrate its topping of the New York Times list. “Number One best seller!!!!! New York Times!!…..Like everywhere!!!! Like everything, everywhere all at once!!! Kinda knew you were Numero Uno!!! But, I guess the world agrees!!! Perfecto! Mi Amore congratulations!! @michaelkirkdouglas,” she wrote.
The memoir takes on a second piece of “Basic Instinct” lore: the persistent story that Douglas punched his director. Not so, he writes. By his account, he and Verhoeven had a heated argument after he accused the director of giving Stone preferential treatment. As the two stood face to face, blood poured from Verhoeven’s nose. Douglas writes that an artery burst and the director was hemorrhaging. The production lost several full shooting days during his recovery, and he returned on a reduced schedule.
Kathleen Turner’s 40-Year Secret
The Tripplehorn disclosure is the second confession pulled from the book in a matter of days. Before publication, People obtained an excerpt describing a relationship between Douglas and Kathleen Turner while they made “Romancing the Stone,” released in 1984. The two kept it quiet for 40 years to shield Luker and the couple’s son, Cameron.
Turner responded: “Good heavens what a fuss about something 40 years ago! I love Michael and I look forward to enjoying the book.”
Douglas also writes about his cocaine addiction, his cancer battle and his marriage to Zeta-Jones, including a brief separation. He writes that just after his separation, and before he pursued Zeta-Jones, he saw five women at once. “Just after my marriage, I had been seeing five other women. 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 nonmonogamous. None of them asked for commitment,” Douglas writes.
The book also covers his complicated bond with his father, screen legend Kirk Douglas, and the professional decisions that strained it. Douglas told the Associated Press that he could not have written the memoir while his father was alive. “I was very uncomfortable talking about the early years and his physical abuse,” he said. He added: “He was of a generation that hit; my mother used the hairbrush. He was tough. That was also one of the reasons why it took a little time to warm up as we got older, and to forgive him.”
One of those decisions was telling his father that he would not be cast as Randle P. McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a role Kirk Douglas had been promised. The part went to Jack Nicholson, who won an Oscar for it.
Douglas writes that he and Rob Reiner confided in each other about their sons’ drug problems. “We both had sons with serious drug issues and we both, at times, had been at the end of our rope,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas has worked more than five decades in the film industry. He has won two Academy Awards: best actor for “Wall Street” and a producing prize for “Cuckoo’s Nest.”
