Michael Douglas unveils ANOTHER on-set affair with Basic Instinct co-star… after Kathleen Turner bombshell

Michael Douglas has unveiled a sizzling affair he indulged in during the filming of his classic 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, the movie centers on a cat-and-mouse game between a detective played by Douglas and a murder suspect played by Sharon Stone.

Although the chemistry between the leads resulted in feverish speculation of a real-life fling, Douglas has now revealed his actual affections lay elsewhere.

The 82-year-old disclosed that he became romantically entwined with Jeanne Tripplehorn, who played his character’s police psychologist and love interest.

‘The truth is, I fell very hard for Jeanne despite our nearly 20-year age difference,’ Douglas shared in his new memoir One Helluva Ride.

When Basic Instinct was released, Tripplehorn was 28 years old and unmarried while Douglas was 47 and still with his first wife, model Diandra Luker.

The Daily Mail has contacted Tripplehorn’s representatives for comment. 

In his autobiography, Douglas confessed he was so ‘crazy about’ Tripplehorn that he found himself on the verge of leaving Luker for her.

However he ultimately arrived at the conclusion that the ‘worst thing’ for him would be to leap straight from what was then his 15-year marriage into another relationship. 

When the affair began, Tripplehorn ‘was unwilling to get involved with a married man, but I assured her that Diandra and I had formally separated,’ said Douglas.

He described his marriage to Luker as a ‘bumpy ride’ punctuated by on-off separations so frequent he lost count of them, claiming they were leading ‘separate lives’ and ‘seeing other people’ by that stage.

Despite their attempts to stay together for the sake of their 13-year-old son Cameron, they both, according to Douglas, understood that their relationship was drawing to a close.

Nevertheless, he was determined to avoid scandal and kept his involvement with Tripplehorn hidden from even their co-stars and the crew, spending private hours with her ensconced in the residence he was renting.

‘While our intimacy in real life was amazing, it made shooting our lovemaking scenes on camera challenging. In front of the crew, Jeanne was so nervous that she kept laughing uncontrollably,’ Douglas recalled.

‘She finally stopped laughing, and we filmed an intense sex scene where I tear her clothes and bite her. She asks me to stop, but I don’t.’

Noting that the era of intimacy coordinators had yet to dawn, Douglas wrote that they ‘did have some concept of consent’ but made the scene ‘the old-fashioned way’ after a careful rehearsal process in which each move was agreed upon before the shoot.

He recalled: ‘At the point when I was supposed to bite the back of her neck, I checked in with Jeanne after each take to make sure she was okay. After the second or third time, she said: “Michael, you know you can really bite me.”‘

Douglas took the note, but ‘the scene was so intense and we were both so involved in it, she couldn’t feel a thing’ – notwithstanding the bruising that had to be concealed the following day by the hair and makeup team.

Her recalled that his ‘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 and Luker ultimately split three years after the release of Basic Instinct, and in 2000 he exchanged vows with his current wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, 57, with whom he shares his son Dylan, 26, and daughter Carys, 23.

Meanwhile, Tripplehorn married her Very Bad Things co-star Leland Orser in 2000 and welcomed a son called August two years later.

Douglas has clarified that although he did not have ‘much connection with Jeanne’ after Basic Instinct wrapped, he ‘called her up and asked for her permission’ to include their romantic history in his book and she ‘said yes,’ via People.

One Helluva Ride also saw Douglas finally confess that he and Kathleen Turner conducted an affair during the making of their 1984 classic Romancing the Stone.

Douglas was married to Luker and Turner was dating her eventual husband, real estate mogul Jay Weiss, at the time the two movie stars fell into bed together.

Rumors of their romance reached such a crescendo that Luker traveled to the Mexican set of the film to confront Turner, who always denied the affair publicly.

However Douglas has now admitted to the dalliance, detailing in his book how he and Turner were instantly enraptured by ‘lust’ on the set of the adventure film.

‘Kathleen was smart, funny and sexy, with a deep sultry voice that became her signature,’ said the ‘nepo baby’ of Old Hollywood icon Kirk Douglas. ‘I instantly liked her and we were immediately attracted to each other.’ 

His home life, he maintained, was ‘in a bad place. Diandra and I were both having extramarital affairs. The truth is that during the production of Romancing the Stone, Kathleen and I fell hard for each other and began a relationship.’

Far from being ‘a fly-by night affair,’ their romance ‘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.’

They were apparently able to conceal the runaround from their colleagues, up to and including their co-star Danny De Vito and director Robert Zemeckis.

‘Following an exhausting day of shooting in the jungle, we’d go out and have a meal, or head out with the group and afterward I would sneak into her hotel room after everybody was asleep,’ the Fatal Attraction star shared.

Luker brought the affair to an end when she alighted on the set, bringing along her and Douglas’ then four-year-old son Cameron.

However the professional connection between Douglas and Kathleen survived, and in 1985 they led a sequel to Romancing the Stone called The Jewel of the Nile.

In 1989 they reunited onscreen yet again for the dark divorce comedy The War of the Roses, this time with DeVito as their director. 

Douglas and Turner struck a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to publicly deny their love connection, a move he characterized as a bid ‘to protect my wife and son.’

He wrote in his new book: ‘The official story went as follows: Yes, we confessed, we had amazing chemistry. Yes, we were both, as Kathleen said, “terrible flirts,” and yes, we were both tempted, but nothing ever happened between us.’

Turner did indeed use the quoted phrase in an interview with The Mail on Sunday a few years ago in which she insisted their attraction never escalated into a full fling.

‘The chemistry was there and Michael and I were both terrible flirts. We were in the jungle and I was feeling very romantic towards him. It was going to happen,’ she said.

‘Then I walked on set one day and his wife was suddenly there. She sat next to him and that was that. You don’t mess with another woman’s husband.’

However Turner has now reacted with equanimity to Douglas’ indiscretion about her in his memoirs, saying: ‘Good heavens, what a fuss about something 40 years ago! I love Michael and I look forward to enjoying the book.’