Why do Hollywood’s handsome leading males stay on the A-List for decades while many of their equally gorgeous female co-stars fade from the spotlight after a few years?
What happened to Romancing the Stone actor Kathleen Turner, who worked with Steve Martin, Michael Douglas, and Jack Nicholson? What’s her current appearance? Learn more!
Kathleen Turner was born in Springfield, Missouri, on June 19, 1954, to strict Christian parents who discouraged her interest in acting.
Turner said, “My father was of missionary stock, so theatre and acting were simply one step up from being a streetwalker.”
Her father worked for the US Foreign Service, so they lived in Venezuela, Cuba, and Canada. Kathleen left her parents to become a theatrical performer at a London high school.
“There were seven of us who were the theatre mafia,” Turner said of her formative years. “We produced, directed, played, chose the plays, sacked one teacher and hired another.”
Kathleen and her family moved to Springfield, Missouri after her father died at 17.
She became a lifelong advocate for women’s rights and healthcare after volunteering at a local Planned Parenthood. She works with NYC’s City Meals On Wheels, Child Help USA, and Planned Parenthood’s Board of Advocates.
Herbert Blau discovered Turner at Southwest Missouri State University. He encouraged her to study at Maryland, where she earned a BFA.
After debuting in The Doctors, Turner became a Hollywood star with a stunning performance in the 1981 thriller Body Heat.
Turner starred in The Man with Two Brains and Romancing the Stone after Body Heat’s triumph. War of the Roses and Jewel of the Nile reunited Douglas, DeVito, and Turner.
Romancing the Stone (1984) and Prizzi’s Honor (1985) won Turner the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
“This is the weirdest comedy in many a month, a movie so dark, so cynical and so funny that probably only Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner could have kept straight faces during the love scenes,” observed Robert Ebert of Prizzi’s Honor in 1985.
Turner is a seductive mob assassin who works with Jack Nicholson’s New York City hitman Charley Partanna.
“Prizzi’s Honor reinforced the picture of me as a manipulative woman, but I must admit there are moments in Prizzi when my character is just this newly-wed–got she’s her job, but she’s preparing casseroles–that I like,” Turner told David Sheff.
“My husband and pals tell me it’s out there,” she said. “I don’t want to know much.”
Turner played Peggy Sue, a time traveler who revisits her 60s school days, in Peggy Sue Got Married the following year.
Turner said in 2018: “It was an extremely unfriendly climate towards women. The contempt, the feeling like a prop.”
Turner has had a great theatrical career since the mid-1980s, but she may never again win awards.
Turner’s 1990 Tony for playing Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was her second major theatrical performance. Theatre World awarded her Outstanding Broadway Debut for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Indiscretions, The Graduate, and Tallulah followed Turner.
She played Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for three years. This role earned the actor another Tony.
Turner disliked the 1966 film adaptation of this play, which starred Elizabeth Taylor as Martha. In a 2018 Vulture interview, she remarked of the Hollywood legend: “For a while I felt like half my existence was making her wrongs right… Listen to her voice. It’s awful.”
“She wasn’t very skilled,” she concluded.
But I was blessed to do the play myself and demonstrate the comedy, for God’s sake.”
Turner appeared in Undercover Blues, The Virgin Suicides, and Beautiful after her stage success.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) featured her gravelly voice as Jessica Rabbit. In Friends, she played Chandler Bing’s drag queen father, Charles Bing.
Turner told Vulture that she struggled to adjust to Friends’ cliquey cast.
“I’ll be honest, which is my wont: I didn’t feel really welcomed by the cast,” Turner said of the show. “I remember wearing this difficult sequined gown—and my high heels were simply hurting me. It seemed interesting that none of the actors offered me a seat.”
“Finally one of the older crew members said, ‘Get Miss Turner a chair,’” she remembered. “The Friends actors were such a clique—but I don’t think my experience with them was unique.”
Rheumatoid arthritis caused Kathleen Turner “inexplicable pains and fevers” un the 1990s.
She needed help getting up by 1994. Turner managed her rheumatoid arthritis with biotech medicine and gymnastics.
“The year before I was diagnosed was incredibly frightening,” she said of her 2002 rheumatoid arthritis education campaign. I didn’t understand.”
“I didn’t know why there was so much agony and why I felt so ill,” she said. “I’m interested in this campaign because I want people to know they can acquire information, manage this disease, and fight for their lives and lifestyles. Help is available.”
Turner’s condition was often upsetting, especially in the news, but she didn’t let it stop her.
She told The Guardian in 2018 that she dismissed the doctor who informed her she would be in a wheelchair for life after her 1992 rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. “I can’t exaggerate the battle against the endless pain and horror of what I’d become.”
“I had to hide my disease for years,” she said. It was horrible to be labelled a drunk and criticized for my appearance. Studios hired Robert Downey Jr. despite his alcoholism. No one would approach me if I stated I had an uncontrolled disease.”
Kathleen Turner divorced real estate entrepreneur Jay Weiss in 2007.
“It doesn’t frustrate me that nearly four decades after [Body Heat] I’m still referred to as a sexual icon,” says the 66-year-old Jessica Rabbit star. I overcame that long ago.”
Turner teaches Practical Acting at NYU.
“I adore teaching,” she told Shondaland in 2020. I can explain it well.”
“I’m tough on them and I don’t take amateurs—only individuals with a certain amount of skill,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d be ineffective.”
We wish Kathleen Turner many more years in the spotlight.
