Kathleen Turner was synonymous with beauty and talent. At the age of 40, she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis: she preferred to be considered an alcoholic rather than reveal her illness. Today she is 67 years old, and she dazzles and moves in "The Kominsky method"
A divorced couple finds themselves in the aftermath of a horrible divorce, so bad that he's booked her as a “Drama Queen”. They talk and suddenly laugh, remembering what made them fall in love, and forgetting what separated them. Why didn't you remarry? asks the ex-turned-buddy and she replies ruefully: You were my only love. He starts to get emotional, "Just kidding," she clarifies and bursts out laughing. It is in this magical scene from The Kominsky Method when Kathleen Turner laughs and her eyes spill life that the viewer signs the unconditional surrender to this impressive actress, who even with her body deformed by corticosteroids, falls in love and confirms that everything she does continues being wonderful.
Kathleen Turner was born on June 19, 1954, on a Missouri farm in a town with a cartoon name: Springfield. Her father, Allen Richard, was a career diplomat who, instead of telling her daughter about Tom Sawyer's adventures, told her about her own. During World War II he was imprisoned in China by the Japanese. The little girl would soon live her own adventures. She had not turned a year old when her family moved to Canada and later settled in Havana.
In Cuba, she learned to speak Spanish, a language that she knows perfectly. The Turners lived peacefully in their world of diplomats until Fidel Castro took power in 1959. "One day the teacher asked us: 'Close your eyes and pray to God to bring you candy.' We did, we opened our eyes and there was nothing. She then told us: 'Close your eyes and ask Fidel Castro for it,' we did and when we opened our eyes we had candy. The teacher asked us: 'Who loves them: God or Fidel?' It was my last day at the Cuban school.” The Americans, including the Turners, went from being friends to enemies, the situation in Havana became untenable, and they left the island.
The new destination was the consulate of Caracas. Kathleen soon showed that quiet and modest, nothing. The actress who would immortalize her phrase/life attitude "if they bite you, slap" refused to wear dresses and would hang out with her schoolmates if something bothered her or bothered her. At the age of thirteen, her family moved to London. In high school, her fearless spirit did not diminish. She organized a student movement to reject the imposition of wearing uniforms. Her reputation as a girl of hers who always goes in front of her was great, her classmates predicted that she would be "the first ambassador to the Moon". At that time, two things attracted her more than the boys who were beginning to hang around her: traveling through Europe and her theater classes. To improve her diction, an eraser was placed between her teeth and thus she reviewed her speeches.
Kathleen Turner's life did not present major difficulties until she tripped. Her father died of a heart attack. The precarious economic situation decided the family's return to the United States. Kathleen herself enrolled at Missouri State University where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
With a degree under her arm and $100 in her pocket, she moved to New York. While she worked as a waitress - a job that seems to be an indispensable condition in most of the lives of celebrities - she appeared in dozens of tests, but she did not stay. It is that despite her S- magnetism, the face of a goddess, her tempting body, her harsh and serious tone -more of a chain smoker than of a fairy tale- she was not convinced of her.
Kathleen Turner's great opportunity came at the age of 27. Director Lawrence Kasdan thought that the 5'7" goddess was ideal to play Matty Walker, a trickster who falls in love with William Hurt and convinces him to murder her husband in Burning Bodies. Turner appears in a white dress, one of those that transforms curves into labyrinths. In a scene in a bathtub, she hints at more than she shows; with the minimum, she takes the viewer to the maximum temperature of eroticism.
After the premiere, reporters discovered that Turner had no qualms about her body or her words. “I loved Matty Walker from the beginning. I didn't mind the explicit S- of the role because I had grown up in Europe and South America, and I hadn't been brainwashed by the hypocritical attitude that they have in the United States toward S-.
The path to success remained elusive. “Finished filming and I resumed my job as a waitress. I knew that the $30,000 they had paid me for the film wouldn't go far in a city like New York."
Turner decided not to be pigeonholed in the role of an S- bombshell but also not to pass into that of a long-suffering woman. All the roles she would accept would be strong, determined, S- empowered women. That is, women who were like she was. “I have a rule: if in the script you do without the role of the woman and nothing essentially changes, then she is an accessory, so I am not interested”.
Kathleen Turner's wild beauty and her evident talent were finally appreciated by the producers. She agreed to work with Steve Martin in the comedy A Genius With Two Brains. Obviously, she didn't play a dumb blonde but an ambitious and unscrupulous woman. Under the direction of Ken Russell, she was a fashion designer who at night, instead of sleeping and dreaming of little angels, worked as a prostitute in The Passion of China Blue.
In 1984 she was part of In Search of the Lost Emerald. It was her first but not last collaboration with Danny De Vito and Michael Douglas on the big screen. She would follow The Jewel of the Nile (1985) and the black comedy The War of the Roses (1989), directed by De Vito himself.
With Douglas, the chemistry on screen was so evident that the saying “together they are dynamite” could be applied to them. Years later, she admitted that she was secretly in love with him, but that the relationship did not go beyond the "friends" box. What she also recounted is that Douglas, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson, an impressive trident, bet who would be the first to sleep with her. None made it. "I don't know whether to kill her or propose to her," said Nicholson, with whom she worked on the film Prizzi's Honor to show her admiration for that blonde weakness of hers.
Perhaps because more than one received a resounding "no" when she tried to hear a submissive "yes" it is that she forged a reputation as a complicated woman. “The story of being difficult is pure gender bullshit. If a man comes on set and says, "This is how I see this being done," people say, "You have a choice." If a woman does it, then he's like, "Oh shit, there she goes." That brave girl who fought with the boys now fought with the producers. She refused to use doubles in action scenes. She thus ended up with a broken nose and scars on her leg.
To marry she chose the New York real estate magnate Jay Weiss. “I never considered marrying an actor. I have never seen an actor walk past a mirror without looking at himself. Who needs two people like that in a family? When Jay demanded that she no longer accept a role as a prostitute. "The only one who decides the roles that I am going to do is me," she replied. The marriage stayed together for 22 long years. In 1987, she gave birth to Rachel, her only daughter, the day after she finished recording the voice of Jessica Rabbit, the animated vamp from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Kathleen Turner kept working but in 1994 while filming The Mommy Murders her body began to give indications that something was wrong. Her, she recounted it in Vanity Fair magazine. "One day I came home feeling sick and suddenly my feet didn't fit in my shoes anymore." The doctors found nothing. Her body became paralyzed: first her arm, then her neck... After an agonizing year in which no one knew how to diagnose her disease, her doctor concluded that she had rheumatoid arthritis. “That same night I attended a parent meeting at my daughter's daycare. There were three steps to climb to enter the school and I had to fight to climb them one by one. The room only had children's chairs, and I began to cry because I knew that if I managed to sit in one of those shitty chairs I would never get up again.
Kathleen Turner has prescribed a corticosteroid-based treatment that swelled her body and made her unrecognizable. She moved awkwardly and uncoordinated. The jokes about her being overweight were daily and cruel. Instead of asking what was wrong with her, they preferred to make it up. It began to be rumored that her transformation was due to her addiction to alcohol and she preferred to tell the truth: ”The producers know what addictions are and are used to managing them. But if I said 'I have a mysterious incurable disease and I don't know if I'll be able to walk tomorrow' no one was going to hire me. So when she tried to grab a cup and couldn't, everyone assumed she was drunk." Although it seems incredible, the strategy worked and Turner continued working, she swallowed tears of pain when she went up a staircase and hid that her ten-year-old daughter brought the spoon to her mouth so that she would eat.
Paradoxically, while posing as an alcoholic, she discovered that vodka calmed her pain. With the disease somewhat controlled and at 46 years old, she got back in shape to appear completely N- in the montage of The Graduate. She sold out all the tickets. “I was able to temporarily control the drink as soon as we released the feature. Nobody can drink and do eight shows a week. However, at one point she could no longer control it and began rehabilitation treatment.
The doctors predicted that she would never walk again and that she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, but they forgot one detail. They were in front of the Turner. Her illness checked her but her attitude didn't negotiate with her. Far from accepting the diagnosis, she fired her doctor and began a series of surgeries that now allow her to continue acting. For twelve years, she every October she underwent an operation. In one of them, they cut the tendons in his feet.
Turner's disease changed her appearance but did not destroy her essence. When she found out that a character described as “a second-rate Kathleen Turner” appeared in the script for Dumb and Dumber 2, she called the directors and informed them that for a small fee, they could have the original. She went through the Californication and Friends series, but she doesn't have great memories of the last one. "The actors on Friends were a gang - I don't think it was personal - I think they were just such a tight-knit little bunch that no one on the outside cared." She continued on stage. In the controversial High, she played an alcoholic nun. Today she is 67 years old, and she assures that she wants to fall in love to "enjoy good S- again". She while she seduces us with The Kominsky method. Seeing her there is no doubt, the Turner in her life has already become immortal.
