Brenda Vaccaro Reveals Why She Broke Off Michael Douglas Engagement Amid Invitations ‘Being Printed’

Brenda Vaccaro is opening up about her short-lived engagement to Michael Douglas.

The Midnight Cowboy actress, 86, was a guest on The Tom & Mickey Show on Monday, October 12, where she shared why the pair never tied the knot, despite wedding planning already being underway.

Vaccaro, who dated Douglas, 82, from 1971 to 1976 after they met while making the 1971 film Summertree, said she “fell in love with somebody else.”

“I wasn’t in love with him anymore. I knew it. He just wasn’t for me,” Vaccaro revealed, telling hosts Tom Postilio and Mickey Conlon that over their five-year relationship, the pair began to grow apart.

“Change is in every relationship. If we really respect a change, we’d never leave anybody,” she said. “And sometimes the change is good. Sometimes it ain’t so good. You know what I mean? But that’s what relationships are. And I just couldn’t stay because I was in love. And I wasn’t in love with him anymore.”

The pair were engaged at the time when Vaccaro decided to call things off with the film and TV star, revealing that the wedding “invitations were being printed,” Vaccaro recalled. “And there were 175 people, I think. Forgive me if I’m wrong, Michael.”

The pair were also already married at the time, Vaccaro shared, in what she called a “hippie wedding” that took place in their agent’s backyard.

“We decided to be together forever,” she remembered. “And he gave me a leather ring because he was a hippie. And we got married with words and love. And there was no priest, there was nothing. And everybody applauded, and we had this wedding. And so I thought, why are we getting married again?”

Their families wanted the wedding, however, with Vaccaro sharing that she felt pressure, particularly from the Douglas camp, to walk down the aisle.

But she couldn’t ignore the feelings she had for someone else, with the Tony nominee revealing that while Douglas was in San Francisco filming The Streets of San Francisco, Vaccaro was in Los Angeles in “bed with the guy I was in love with. That’s what I did.”

Douglas, meanwhile, opened up about his relationship with Vaccaro, who has been married to Guy Hector since 1986, in his recently released memoir, One Helluva Ride, calling the actress “the whole package,” per People.

The pair went on to have what Douglas described as the “most serious relationship” he’d had in his life up to that point; he also recalled the moment he found out about her affair with fellow actor Don Stroud.

“I heard through mutual acquaintances that Brenda regretted ending our relationship and especially ending it for Don Stroud. Truthfully, the split should have happened long before it did,” Douglas wrote, per the outlet, adding that they “had simply grown apart.”

While their split hurt him “deeply,” especially because of the “mock wedding” they had, Douglas wrote, the pair have remained on relatively good terms over the years, with Douglas, who went on to marry Catherine Zeta-Jones, even thanking Vaccaro in the acknowledgments of the book for letting him interview her.