In his memoir One Helluva Ride, Michael Douglas recalls dating five women when he met Catherine Zeta-Jones in 1998. He says she made clear that she wanted a monogamous relationship.
Douglas says Zeta-Jones did not want to be one of several women he was seeing. She told him he could continue dating others or end those relationships and be with her. The actor recalls asking her to wait while he made five brief calls to tell the other women he was ending things.
He recounts the episode in his autobiography, One Helluva Ride. According to Douglas, the five women lived in different cities. He writes that none had asked him for a commitment or asked whether he was seeing anyone else. That account is Douglas’s own recollection.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones first met in 1998 at a screening of The Mask of Zorro, in which she starred with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins. They saw each other again a few weeks later at the Deauville American Film Festival in France, where Douglas was promoting A Perfect Murder.
Douglas says his publicist later arranged a meeting for drinks. He recalled finding Zeta-Jones intelligent, funny, down-to-earth and very beautiful. At a later dinner, Banderas and his then-wife, Melanie Griffith, joined them. After dinner, Douglas walked Zeta-Jones to the hotel elevator and told her he would be the father of her children. In his memoir, he says he meant it, while acknowledging he had been drinking.