Catherine Zeta-Jones is recalling the conflict she felt when she heard about sexual harassment accusations against her husband, Michael Douglas.
"My children and I were profoundly devastated by those allegations," she told London-based newspaper The Times. "And I was torn about where my absolute morals lie."
Michael Douglas gave a pre-emptive interview in early January to get ahead of a report from author and journalist Susan Braundy that he had made sexually-charged comments and masturbated in front of her during a private meeting in his apartment in the late '80s, when Braundy ran the New York office of Douglas' production company.
"I'd confess to anything I thought I was responsible for," he told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. "And it was most certainly not masturbating in front of this woman. This reeks. I would have respected if she had reached out to me any time over these years, to share her pain or concerns, and I would have been the first one to respond. But this, going directly to the newspapers or whatever you want to call them, it just reeks of something else."
Zeta-Jones and Douglas have been married since 2000. They have two children: Dylan, 18, and Carys, 15. The actress called the situation "nasty" and noted it put her in a "really hard position."
"This woman came out of nowhere and accused my husband," she said. "I had a very big conversation with him, with the kids in the room, and said, 'Do you understand if more comes out?...' "
She added that Douglas told his family there was "no story here, and that time will tell."
"And, of course, it did," she continued. "There was nothing to back it up at all. For any accusation that comes out that isn't backed up, that knocks the movement back 20 years."
