Michael Douglas has claimed that Debra Winger was being lined up to play Kathleen Turner's part in Romancing The Stone - but lost the role after biting him.

The Hollywood star, 77, said he met Winger for dinner ahead of the 1984 film, which was about a mercenary and a writer who fall for each other during a jungle adventure.

Things were going well and the group were “talking and knocking back tequilas”, but Douglas said that on the way out the actor leaned over and bit his arm.

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He said on Rob Lowe’s Literally! podcast: “We walk out and, just as you would kind of go ‘Oh you!’ and give someone a little punch in the arm, she goes ‘Oh you!’ and she reaches over and she bites me on my arm. I’m like, ‘Aaargh!’ She bites me."

He went on: "She’s joking and I’m looking at her and go, ‘I don’t know, I'm thinking this could be rough…’ she’s broken the skin!”

The Kominsky Method actor said that at a later date he and the film’s director Robert Zemeckis were at the studio talking about the film and Winger, and the biting incident came up.

He said: “I break down in tears, ‘I can’t go into the jungle with her, she bit me, look! She bit me in the arm'.”

Someone later suggested Turner as a possible co-star for the movie and she went on to land the part.

The film went on to become a huge hit, and the actors reunited for sequel The Jewel Of The Nile the following year.

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Douglas and Turner also shared the screen in 1989 in The War Of The Roses, a dark comedy about a couple going through an increasingly bitter divorce.

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