Michael Douglas has gone public to defend himself against comments he was credited as making about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's romance in a recent magazine article.
The movie star reportedly poured scorn on the couple's relationship in style magazine GQ, posing the question: "I mean how long is that going to last?"
Douglas now insists he was misquoted, and sat down with US news show Extra! to clear up the "unfortunate" matter.
The Basic Instinct star says: "It was a lengthy article. (It) must have been 20 hours of tape recording, so I asked to hear the tape recording and the reporter said, Well, I turned the tape recorder off.'
"I said, 'Well you had it on for the whole time, so I didn't say it.'"
Douglas admits that even though the quotes weren't his, he still wrote an apology to Brad and Angelina.
He adds: "I consider him a good friend and she does wonderful work for the United Nations, which is what I'm also involved in.
"There's just a lot of pressure on the print media and they get to kind of exploitative quotes to try to attract people for their circulation, so it was unfortunate."