Catherine Zeta-Jones had been with Michael Douglas for only a few months when she set a boundary: she wasn’t going to stay with a man who saw other women.
He, as he recounts in his memoir “One Helluva Ride”, didn’t argue. He said the line that’s now making the rounds around the world: “Wait here, I have to make five quick calls”. She, surprised, asked: “Five? You have to make five calls?”.
Douglas recounts that after separating from Diandra Luker, his wife of 23 years, he maintained non-monogamous relationships with five women who lived in different cities. He writes that it seemed to him like a respectful way to handle things, that none of them asked him for commitment, and that he assumes they were also seeing other people.
That night, he says, he called each one to tell her he had met someone and couldn’t keep seeing her. His account of how it ended is as brief as the rest: “they all took it well”. The details come solely from his own account, with no version from Zeta-Jones or the five women.
The two married in 2000, have two children, and are still together after a brief separation in 2013.