Catherine Zeta-Jones showcased her enduring Hollywood glamour during an outing in New York City on Thursday, just two days after her husband, Michael Douglas, released his candid memoir.
The 57-year-old actress highlighted her statuesque figure in sleek black leather leggings, pairing the fitted look with dramatically high stilettos.
With her glossy jet-black hair flowing around her radiant face, Zeta-Jones walked confidently through Manhattan with a smile. She appeared unfazed by the intimate revelations featured in her husband’s book.
Titled One Helluva Ride, the autobiography recounts Douglas’s affairs with co-stars Kathleen Turner and Jeanne Tripplehorn—relationships that took place while he was still married to his first wife, model Diandra Luker.
Douglas also shared provocative details about his romance with Zeta-Jones, revealing that she made him wait nine months before the pair slept together.
Zeta-Jones addressed the memoir publicly for the first time on Thursday morning, telling viewers during an appearance on the Today show that she has never actually read it.
Catherine Zeta-Jones displayed her signature Hollywood glamour while stepping out in New York on Thursday, two days after Michael Douglas released his memoir
The 57-year-old actress accentuated her statuesque frame with fitted black leather leggings and towering stilettos
Our News Outlet has contacted representatives for Douglas and Zeta-Jones for comment.
She prompted an audible laugh from the studio crew when she joked: “As much as I love my husband, when I’m tired at night, I have no intention of reading about him at all.”
The actress also pointed to her demanding workload, which included filming Wednesday, her Addams Family spin-off, as well as her upcoming thriller series Kill Jackie.
Still, she urged “everyone else” to pick up the memoir, adding: “The book is called One Helluva Ride, and I think everybody should hold onto their cowboy hats, because I think it is.”
Today host Willie Geist said Douglas had told him that, after the memoir’s publication, he “peeked around a corner” to see how Zeta-Jones was reacting. To his relief, she “didn’t seem upset.”
“He got me at a good time,” Zeta-Jones replied with a laugh.
In the memoir, Douglas recalled meeting Zeta-Jones at the Deauville American Film Festival in France in 1998. He was 53 at the time, while she was a 28-year-old rising star.
Amused by Douglas’s reputation as a womanizer, Zeta-Jones reportedly made him wait nine months before agreeing to become intimate with him.
Although Douglas wrote that he was “willing to take whatever time we both needed,” he continued seeing five other women in different cities during the early stages of their courtship.
Their first intimate encounter came after Douglas invited her to his holiday home in Mallorca. He arranged for her to have a separate bedroom and brought along Miami Heat owner Pat Riley and Riley’s wife of 30 years, hoping Zeta-Jones would see him alongside a “normal, stable couple.”
Douglas said he first met Zeta-Jones at the Deauville American Film Festival in France in 1998, where the pair appear in a photograph he later shared on Instagram
“That, I hoped, would offset my ‘reputation’ that Catherine had mentioned the first night we met,” he wrote. “And I thought that having my treasured friends around would help Catherine feel comfortable. Turns out, I was right.”
Having taken their relationship to the next level, Zeta-Jones insisted on monogamy, whereupon Douglas made ‘five quick calls.’
Douglas and Zeta-Jones welcomed their son Dylan in August 2000 and married at the iconic Plaza Hotel on New York’s Fifth Avenue that November.
Their daughter Carys, whom Zeta-Jones was heavily pregnant with when she danced at the Oscars and won best supporting actress for Chicago, arrived in April 2003.
The marriage was not without its rough patches, particularly in the early 2010s as Douglas battled throat cancer and Zeta-Jones was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder.
The couple briefly separated in 2013 but quickly fell back into each other’s arms later that year, with Douglas divulging he and Zeta-Jones were ‘working things out.’
While promoting his new memoir, Douglas insisted the split was ‘mutual’ and firmly shot down the suggestion that he ‘won her back,’ in the Sunday Times.
‘You know, we had our problems but I love her dearly and, 25 years, you know,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t know about your marital status, but marriage is a lot of work, you know. And so, you know, we’re good. We’re in good shape. It’s all I can say.’
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After decades of secrecy, Douglas went public with his romance with his Basic Instinct co-star Tripplehorn in his memoir
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
His marriage to Luker lasted from 1977 until 1995 and produced a son called Cameron, now 47, whose past struggles with addiction are detailed in the book.
Douglas characterized his relationship with Luker as a ‘bumpy ride’ punctuated by mutual infidelity and on-off splits so frequent he lost count of them.
However, the Wall Street icon maintained that he ‘never gave up hope that we would reconcile’ during his time apart from Zeta-Jones in 2013.
Douglas also disclosed he indulged in an affair with Jeanne Tripplehorn when she played his therapist and love interest in Basic Instinct.
When Basic Instinct arrived in theaters, Tripplehorn was 28 years old and unmarried while Douglas was 47 and still married to Luker.
In One Helluva Ride, 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.
His affairs with Tripplehorn and Turner unfolded during his marriage to his first wife, model Diandra Luker, whom he is pictured with in 1993
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.
He has clarified this week 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 admit he and Kathleen Turner conducted an affair during the making of their 1984 classic Romancing the Stone.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones have welcomed tow children called Carys, 23, and Dylan, 26, both of whom have followed their parents into the acting profession
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 became swept up in ‘lust’ on the set of the adventure film.
They were apparently able to conceal the fling from their colleagues, up to and including their co-star Danny DeVito 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’s then four-year-old son Cameron.
Turner has now reacted with equanimity to Douglas’s 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.’
