Michael Douglas regrets 'embarrassing' Catherine Zeta-Jones with oral sex comments

The actor insists his claims in 2013 that oral sex would cause - and cure - throat cancer were taken out of context

Michael Douglas with Catherine Zeta-Jones

Michael Douglas has apologised to Catherine Zeta-Jones for his comments in 2013 proclaiming that tongue cancer could be cured by performing oral sex on women.

In an interview with Event magazine to promote his new film Beyond the Reach, the 71-year-old said he didn’t do a good job articulating his thoughts on his 2010 diagnosis.

Douglas told reporters at the time that “It’s a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer. And if you have it, cunnilingus is also the best cure for it.”

The actor, who has starred in Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction but is not thought to have any medical qualifications, continued by saying that he didn’t regret his lifestyle choices such as smoking or drinking, since neither contributed to his diagnosis.

At the time, a medical professional told the Guardian that Douglas’s hypothesis “Medically, [just] doesn’t make sense.”

But Douglas, who is now cancer-free, said that his only regret was the humiliation that Catherine Zeta-Jones would have experienced as a result.

“I so regretted any embarrassment that it caused Catherine,” he said, “and her family.”

“What I was trying to say was that there is a sexually transmitted virus called HPC,” he continues. “But there is a vaccination that they recommend to al kids before they become sexually active so they don’t catch HPC, which is a cause of certain types of cancer – cervical cancer, tongue and throat.”

So, just to clarify: does Michael Douglas think oral sex could cure some types of cancer?

“No,” he says, “I was trying to make a public service announcement.”

Although Michael Douglas will be playing physicist Hank Pym in the upcoming Ant-Man, there’s nothing to suggest any of his upcoming roles involve knowledge of medical practices, which is probably a good thing isn’t it.