Michael Douglas (82) Admits He Threatened Julia Roberts’ (58) Golden Globe in a Drunken Rage That Ended Their Friendship

Celebrity memoirs tend to live or die on one thing: how candid the author is willing to be. Michael Douglas’s new book, ‘One Helluva Ride,’ hit shelves on October 6, and it has already produced a steady stream of confessions about his career and his personal life. The 82-year-old actor has said he finally chose to tell his story on his own terms after years of being asked.

One of the book’s most candid threads covers his struggles with alcohol and cocaine in the early 1990s. Douglas writes about those years as a period of heavy drinking and drug use, and he ties them to several regrettable episodes. One of them, which he describes as wildly embarrassing and as something that stuck with him for years, involves a Hollywood A-lister.

That A-lister is Julia Roberts. Douglas writes that he once threatened to take her Golden Globe and stick it somewhere unpleasant during a drunken confrontation at a 1990 Golden Globes party, and he says the episode effectively ended their friendship.

Douglas had produced ‘Flatliners,’ the 1990 Joel Schumacher thriller starring Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt. At the party, he had brought his son Cameron, who was around 13 at the time. According to Douglas’s account, he spotted Roberts at the bar with her arm around Cameron, kind of nuzzling him.

Douglas writes that his son looked stunned in that moment, but he is quick to add that he was pretty drunk. He says he confronted Roberts, telling her to take her hands off his son and to take her Golden Globe and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. It is his version of the story, and the memoir offers no account from Roberts.

The fallout came quickly. The next morning, Douglas’s producing partner Rick Bieber phoned to say they needed to talk. Douglas writes that he had crossed a line with the most in-demand young actress in Hollywood.

He apologized by sending Roberts roses, then apologized in person to both Roberts and Sutherland at the ‘Flatliners’ production office. The production continued, and they finished the film together. But the friendship did not recover, at least on Roberts’s side. Douglas writes that he stayed friends with Sutherland, while with Roberts it was not so much.

The Roberts story is just one of several revelations in the 496-page book. Douglas also confirms an affair with Kathleen Turner while filming ‘Romancing the Stone’ in Mexico. He has pushed back on the idea that the memoir is mostly about sex, including in a tense exchange with The Sunday Times.

The book is structured around 12 of his films, and it covers family struggles as well, including his son Cameron’s difficulties. Douglas has described his career as one spent playing flawed American men, and the memoir makes clear that those characters were not always far from his own real life.

The memoir offers little suggestion that the two actors have repaired their relationship, but their paths have remained prominent in Hollywood. Roberts received a thunderous standing ovation at the 2026 Golden Globes, where she presented Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy. It was a reminder of how much goodwill she commands in the industry, and how much time has passed since that night.

For his part, Douglas seems to be treating the confession as part of a broader reckoning. He frames the 1990 episode as one of the moments he regrets from a period he says was shaped by addiction. Readers will have to decide how much weight to give a story told entirely from one side, but it is unlikely to be the last memoir anecdote to make headlines.

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