Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones have been together for almost two decades and their marriage is going strong. However, the Wall Street actor was previously married to Diandra Luker, and their relationship had a very tumultuous ending. Our Diandra Luker wiki covers the start and end of her dramatic marriage to Michael Douglas, and her life after that.
| About Diandra Luker | |
|---|---|
| Known As | Diandra Douglas, Diandra de Morrell Douglas |
| Spouse | Michael Douglas March 1977 - June 2000 |
| Children | Imara Douglas, Hudson Bacon, Hawk Bacon, Cameron Douglas |
| Hometown | Mallorca, Spain |
| Studied at | University of California, Georgetown University, |
| Birth | 1958 |
Diandra Luker Almost Joined the U.S. Foreign Service
Diandra Luker (born 1958) grew up in Deià in Mallorca, Spain, where her Anglo-French mother, an archaeologist, had a family estate. Her father, a Swiss-American diplomat, passed away when she was a child.
“I grew up with writers and painters and archeologists,” Luker, then the newlywed wife of Michael Douglas, said. Luker would attend several boarding schools as a child, including one in Santa Barbara when she was nine. Douglas was a freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara, back then.
Initially intending to follow her father’s footsteps into the U.S. Diplomatic Corps, Diandra went to Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She even completed a summer internship at the White House in her first year.
“But little by little I started to change my ideas about going into the Foreign Service,” she said. ”Then I met Michael.”
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Luker Married Douglas When She Was 19
Fresh off the success of the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a then-32-year-old Michael Douglas was in Washington, D.C., attending a gala before Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. It was at that party that he met then-19-year-old Georgetown student Diandra Luker.
They got to talking that night and went on to spend the next two days in each other’s company. Douglas proposed to her nine days after meeting her and they married six weeks later in March 1977.
After they were married, they moved to Los Angeles and Luker attended the University of California. They also maintained a residence in New York, where Luker worked for Red Cross and the Metropolitan Museum.
She hosted fundraisers for the Red Cross, produced documentaries for the Met, and even hosted a gala with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She also did a little modeling on the side for major designers.
However, she couldn’t adapt to the Hollywood lifestyle. Moreover, she soon began to suspect that Douglas had been partying and cheating behind her back.
Douglas’ wild-partying lifestyle would eventually lead to the end of their marriage. Luker filed for divorce in 1995 and was awarded $45.0 million as part of the divorce settlement.
Douglas and Luker also share a vacation home in Mallorca. Luker, who is fluent in Spanish and Mallorcan, spends a lot of time there with her kids.
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Luker and Douglas Have One Son
Michael Douglas’ eldest child and only child with Luker, Cameron Douglas, was born on December 13, 1978. Also an actor, he appeared Jackie Chan’s Mr. Nice Guy (1997) and National Lampoon’s Adam & Eve (2005).
Cameron, however, infamously had a public battle with drugs. He was also arrested and spent time in prison on drug offenses.
In 2019, he published a memoir titled Long Way Home, which detailed his childhood and downward spiral into drugs. In the revelatory memoir, he wrote about Luker telling a seven-year-old Cameron about Michael’s cheating and marijuana use.
He wrote that the confessions from his mother caused him to cry himself to sleep and binge-eat. He also recalls passing out joints to his father and his friends when he was a child.
Michael’s rumored cheating, rehab stint for sex addiction, and eventual divorce from Luker took its toll on Cameron. His drug use escalated and his parents tried to cut him off financially.
When Cameron was in prison for seven years, Michael and Luker stood by him and helped him overcome his problems. Cameron now lives with his girlfriend and they have an almost-two-year-old daughter together.
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Luker Dated a Hedge Fund Tycoon
Douglas married Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2000, the same year he and Luker divorced. Luker, too, moved on with Zack Hampton Bacon III, a wealthy hedge fund executive, that same year.
They were engaged and planned to marry. Before they’d walk down the aisle, however, they’d welcome twin boys, Hudson and Hawk, via surrogate in 2004. Luker is not the biological mother of the twins and planned to adopt them after their birth.
When the boys were only a few months old, Luker and Bacon split. What ensued was a bitter and ugly custody battle for Hudson and Hawk Bacon.
Luker wanted the boys to live with her in Santa Barbara, California. Bacon wanted to bring the boys to New York, where his work is based.
Things got explosive when Luker accused Bacon of domestic violence and had him arrested. He denied the accusations, but she got a restraining order against him.
Bacon claimed his ex had wanted a daughter instead and was dejected when the surrogate gave birth to twin boys. Luker adopted a girl, Imara, from Kazakhstan soon after her split from Bacon.
It’s unclear how they settled the custody of their sons. Nonetheless, Luker’s Instagram shows that Hudson and Hawk, as well as Imara and Cameron, spend a lot of time with her.
She would have a very brief marriage and quick divorce with an entrepreneur and environmental activist, Michael Klein. She later dated a man named Paulo Oliveira, though the current status of their relationship is unknown.
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Luker Filed a Lawsuit for Douglas’ Earnings from Wall Street 2
In 2010, Luker filed a lawsuit staking claim over Douglas’ earnings from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. This was despite the millions she had already won in the initial divorce settlement.
Luker’s side argued that their divorce deal entitled her to half of Douglas’ earnings from movies he made during the duration of their two-decade-long marriage. That also included residuals, merchandising, and ancillary rights—and any future spinoffs, like Wall Street 2 in 2010.
That same year, Douglas was diagnosed with cancer and he and Luker were fighting for leniency towards Cameron during his court hearings. Luker received a barrage of negative attention in the media for demanding a share of Douglas’ earnings a decade after their divorce.
She was likened to Douglas’ Wall Street character Gordon Gekko and labeled a greedy gold digger, among many unsavory things. But Luker defended her choices in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
She said that she tried to adjourn the case when she learned of Douglas’ cancer diagnosis after she began proceedings. But she claimed that his side pushed the case through, citing it as a frivolous lawsuit.
She also landed in a financial pinch when she lost most of her divorce settlement in the infamous Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. That and more financial setbacks reportedly were the reason she went ahead with that “spinoff” clause in their divorce agreement.
However, after two attempts, a New York court denied her bid for Douglas’ Wall Street earnings.
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