Turns out, there is such a thing as an amicable split—especially if you’ve had nearly five decades to sit with it.
Brenda Vaccaro and Michael Douglas dated from 1971 to 1976, and to this day, the Nonnas actress, 85, has nothing but positive memories of their time together.
“Everything was wonderful,” Vaccaro told Page Sixin an interview published on Sunday, May 11. “We were young, we were beautiful, oh my God, we were such a gorgeous couple. Breathtaking.”
Before their careers took off, Vaccaro and Douglas, 80, decided to move to Tinseltown. “To come to California together to experience all that stuff,” she recalled. “He got his first show, The Streets of San Francisco. We were so excited. It was like, ‘Wow, you know, we left New York and came to California and everything that was supposed to happen happened.’”
In a 2017 interview with Closer Weekly, Vaccaro revealed the reason for the pair’s split.
“I fell madly in love with someone else, [actor] Don Stroud. There was this really strong connection—spiritually, sexually and so overpowering I could not handle it,” Vaccaro admitted.
“My dear friend Robert Shaw, who was making Jaws, told me what I was doing was rash and I was making a mistake—that momentary pleasures like the one with Don would lead to lasting regrets if I broke up with Michael,” she continued.
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“I regret all of it. Everything was different back then. There were a lot of drugs. We hung out with Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson, and it was a crazy time,” Vaccaro concluded.
Despite their breakup, Vaccaro told Page Six that she thinks Douglas is “wonderful.”
Following her relationship with Douglas, Vaccaro was briefly married twice. In 1986, she married her now-husband, Guy Hector.
Douglas is married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. They have a daughter named Carys and a son named Dylan. Douglas also has a son named Cameron from a previous marriage to Diandra Luker.
