Michael Douglas (82) Fires Back at the British Press Over Sex Questions in a Tense Memoir Interview

Memoir season in Hollywood usually brings polished anecdotes and carefully timed excerpts, but Michael Douglas’s book tour has delivered something more combustible. His memoir ‘One Helluva Ride’ arrives on Tuesday, October 6, from Grand Central Publishing, billed as the unfiltered story of his life.

The book traces his fractured childhood, his complicated relationship with his father, Kirk Douglas, and his rise from being dismissed as a famous actor’s son to winning an Oscar for producing ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’ It also covers his 25-year marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, along with the headline-grabbing revelation of his affair with ‘Romancing the Stone’ co-star Kathleen Turner.

It was a profile ahead of the release, however, that turned into the real talking point. In a tense interview with The Sunday Times, Douglas insisted his memoir is not full of sex and then asked why the British press seems so consumed with the subject.

The 82-year-old was speaking with the paper’s chief interviewer, Decca Aitkenhead, who asked whether the book was heavy on his romantic history. Douglas said he did not feel it was, noting that he mentions only a couple of women in the book.

The exchange grew more strained from there. When Aitkenhead asked if he had ever wondered why he slept with so many women, Douglas pushed back, saying he did not see it that way and describing himself as a healthy product of the 1960s. Aitkenhead wrote that his eyes narrowed and his tone turned accusatory.

He then turned the question around, asking why, of all the countries and press he deals with, British journalists seem so fixated on sex.

The conversation also returned to a decades-old rumor that Douglas went to rehab for sex addiction. He has long denied it, and he says so firmly in the memoir, writing that he was never a sex addict.

In the interview, he suggested the label was dreamed up by a clever editor in London and said it has stuck with him ever since. He also pointed out that nobody had heard of the idea before that moment.

Aitkenhead also reminded Douglas that he wrote about having to end things with 5 women before he and Zeta-Jones could be exclusive. He told her that was not quite how it happened.

According to Douglas, Zeta-Jones simply said that if they were going to continue, she wanted the relationship to be monogamous, so he called several people he had been seeing to end things. Aitkenhead wrote that his expression suggested he thought he had just corrected her.

The two first met at a film festival in 1998 and married in 2000, and Douglas also rejected the idea that he had to win her back after their brief separation in 2013. He described their marriage as hard work but in good shape, and he said Zeta-Jones has not yet read the book.

Despite the headlines, the book covers far more than romance. In an interview with NPR, Douglas discussed how the memoir tells his life through 12 of his films, and he also writes about his son Cameron’s struggles and the time he served for his choices.

The publisher’s description quotes him saying he spent much of his career playing flawed American men, and that the memoir shows it was not much of a stretch. Whether readers see that candor in the final pages is something they can now judge for themselves.

For now, the interview has given ‘One Helluva Ride’ a publicity boost that no marketing campaign could have planned. Do you think Michael Douglas has a point about the British press, or was he being too defensive about his own memoir? Let us know in the comments.

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