It was a serious feud, too – after Kathleen Turner accused Nicolas Cage of stealing chihuahuas and drunk driving in her autobiography, Cage took her to the High Court for it.

But now it's all come juddering to an end, with Kathleen Turner making a public apology for the claims. Thanks heavens – now we can all stop thinking of Nicolas Cage as the man who stole a chihuahua and go back to thinking of him as the man who runs up hills dressed as a bear and punches girls square in the face. It's his comfort zone, if you will.

Nicolas Cage is a man not without his fair share of weird experiences – he's confronted naked intruders in his house, named his son after Superman and starred in films noteworthy only for the bits where he shouts "How'd it get burned? How'd it get burned? HOW'D IT GET BURNED? HOW'D IT GET BURNED?" – but if there's one thing he doesn't do, it's steal chihuahuas.

But tell that to Kathleen Turner. Now that Kathleen Turner has slowly started turning into a deep-voiced bulldog, she's found it harder and harder to get acting work. So, to keep herself busy, she recently wrote her autobiography Send Yourself Roses. Trouble is, Kathleen's memory doesn't seem to be what it was, and her memories of a youthful Nicolas Cage seem to be way off.

Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage worked together on Peggy Sue Got Married and – far from presenting an accurate depiction of the wide-eyed young actor who wanted nothing more than to one day make a movie that ended with him shouting "Wha! Wha! Not the bees! Not the bees! Arrrgh! My eyes! My eyes! Arrrgh! Arrrghurbhb!" – Turner's autobiography suggested that Nicolas Cage preferred to go around stealing dogs and driving drunk.

Outraged at these lies, Nicolas Cage sued Kathleen Turner for defamation and libel in February. It could have all got very messy, but now Kathleen Turner has relented and apologised, as the New York Times reports:

"Ms. Turner, 53, 'sincerely apologized' to Mr. Cage, 44, in a statement read by her lawyer on Friday in a London courtroom. Ms. Turner’s assertion, which led Mr. Cage to sue for libel, was made in Ms. Turner’s book Send Yourself Roses and was published in a London newspaper in February. Ms. Turner agreed to reimburse Mr. Cage for court costs and to make a donation to a charity benefiting victims of elder abuse. Ms. Turner’s British publisher will place an apology or correction in the book , and Associated Newspapers agreed to remove the article from its website and to publish an apology."

Although momentarily embarrassing for Kathleen Turner, this apology can only be a win-win for everyone in the long-term. Nicolas Cage gets his reputation back, sure, but this brouhaha has probably caused thousands more people to buy her autobiography, just to see what other batshit lies she makes up about famous people she knows.

However, one sad result of this lawsuit is that Kathleen Turner will no longer be making an audiobook of Send Yourself Roses. Not because of libel or anything, but because people have just worked out that her voice is now so deep that people involuntarily shit themselves whenever she speaks.

Read more:

Turner Apologises – New York Times 

Fed up with a passage in her autobiography claiming that he's not only a drink-driver but a brazen chihuahua-thief, Nicolas Cage has decided to sue Kathleen Turner for everything she's got – which at the last count totalled three boxes of Serial Mom VHS tapes, some elastic-waisted jeans and half a packet of Lockets.

Still, Kathleen Turner should count herself lucky that Nicolas Cage is only suing her – it's only common decency that's stopping him from jumping into his old bear suit and smacking her right in the face.

Thanks to Ghost Rider and National Treasure 2 topping the box office, it's fair to say that Nicolas Cage is at the top of his game. That's strange in itself, especially given that the latter mainly involves Cage saying a lot of words he clearly doesn't understand and wishing he could just roll around the floor screaming "Not the bees! NOT THE BEES!" at the top of his voice again.

Anyway, as a bona fide star, Nicolas Cage needs to protect his reputation. Admittedly his reputation is that of a terrible actor who names his son after Superman and goes all boogley-eyed when confronted with triplets, but that's his reputation and he needs to defend it my any means he can.

And that means that when chainsaw-voiced actresses who used to be pretty but now look kind of old and dumpy saw that Nicolas Cage possibly stole a small dog 22 years ago, he'll sue them to high heaven. A shame, because that's pretty much what Kathleen Turner claims in her autobiography Send Yourself Roses.

Discussing when she worked with Nicolas Cage on the 1986 Francis Ford Coppola movie Peggy Sue Got Married, Kathleen Turner wrote:

"Everything Francis (Ford Coppola) wanted him (Cage) to do, he went against to show that he wasn't under his uncle's wing. Which was ridiculous. Oh, that stupid voice of his and the fake teeth! Honestly, I cringe to think about it. He caused so many problems. He was arrested twice for drunk driving and, I think, once for stealing a dog. He'd come across a Chihuahua he liked and stuck it in his jacket."

And, as far as Nicolas Cage is concerned, none of that happened, and so he's launched libel proceedings against Kathleen Turner in London's High Court. Why London? It could be because Nicolas Cage has a house in England and it's closer, or it could be because British libel laws are weighted flatly in favour of the plaintiff and it would have been much harder for him to win a similar case in America.

Either way, it's so rare for celebrities to sue each other that this could be one to keep an eye on. After all, imagine if Steve Guttenburg sued Ally Sheedy for something that happened during the production of Short Circuit. That's the magnitude of we're talking about here, people.

Read more:

Nicolas Cage To Sue Turner Over 'False' Book Claims – FemaleFirst