Michael Douglas has revealed that late NBA legend Kobe Bryant repeatedly found reasons to visit Catherine Zeta-Jones during the early days of the actor’s long-distance courtship.
Douglas, 82, makes the claim in his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” where he details how geography nearly derailed his romance with the Welsh actress before it truly began. The couple met at the Deauville American Film Festival in France in 1998, but found themselves separated by 2,795 miles — he in New York, she in Pacific Palisades, California.
“She was smart, funny, unpretentious, and, yes, breathtakingly beautiful. She just seemed so confident and self-assured, too,” Douglas wrote of their first encounter.
The distance was not the only complication. Zeta-Jones, 57, happened to live below Bryant, then a rising Los Angeles Lakers star who would not marry Vanessa Laine until 2001. Douglas alleges the basketball player used a four-legged excuse to make repeated appearances at his future wife’s home.
“Apparently Kobe kept finding excuses to stop by Catherine’s house,” Douglas wrote. “I’m not sure how many times he ‘lost his dog’ but it was a lot!”
Zeta-Jones herself confirmed their neighborly connection following Bryant’s death in a January 2020 helicopter crash that also killed his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. In an online tribute, she described watching his basketball court from her window and meeting him through his wandering pet.
“We met the day he moved in through his dog, that started to, and continued to wander in to my garden,” she wrote. “His basketball court was my view. I watched his talent and dedication, yet how could I have known that he was to become what he became.”
Douglas and Zeta-Jones became engaged on New Year’s Eve 1999 and married at New York City’s Plaza Hotel in 2000. In his memoir, Douglas admits he was not exactly single when they met. Following his 1995 divorce from first wife Diandra Douglas, he had been simultaneously involved with five other women, each in a different city.
“I made sure they all lived in different cities, which felt like a respectful way to be non-monogamous,” he wrote. “None of them asked for a commitment or even asked what else I was up to. I am sure they were seeing other people, too.”
When Zeta-Jones entered the picture, Douglas faced a logistical challenge. His answer to her was apparently to wait because he had “five quick calls” to make.
“Five? You have to make five calls?” she replied, according to his account.
“That day, I called each one to say I met somebody and would no longer be able to continue seeing them. They all took it well,” Douglas added.
The memoir also revisits the couple’s brief separation in 2013, with Douglas writing that he “never gave up hope” they would reconcile. They did, and have now been together for nearly three decades.
Douglas traces his attraction to Zeta-Jones back to watching her 1998 film “The Mask of Zorro,” and she appears throughout the book’s pages as a recurring figure in his recollections.
Bryant and Vanessa remained married until his death, and the basketball star’s alleged dog-related visits to Zeta-Jones’s garden never developed beyond neighborly acquaintance — at least from the actress’s public account, which emphasized his athletic dedication rather than any romantic pursuit.
Douglas’s memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” is currently available.