Kathleen Turner: The Oscar Legends Interview

In the 1980s, very few actors, male or female, had the kind of skyrocket career Kathleen Turner enjoyed. She became a big box office draw, a critical darling (albeit often divisively), and an artist seemingly bent on never playing the same role twice (with few exceptions). In 1981, Turner redefined sexuality onscreen in her debut, Lawrence Kasden’s Body Heat opposite William Hurt. The film was a throwback to noir cinema like Double Indemnity but brimmed with a sizzling sexiness. She was a new breed of femme fatale.

Turner went on to prove she had mad comic chops in Carl Reiner’s The Man with Two Brains and could turn around and become an action heroine in Robert Zemekis’s surprise hit Romancing the Stone. That same year (1984), she would take on the role of high-powered businesswoman by day/adventurous prostitute at night in Ken Russell’s wild and wicked Crimes of Passion. It was a bold move and by no means her last. Turner won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy for Romancing the Stone and the LA Film Critics Award for Best Actress for both films. Alas, she did not receive an Oscar nomination.

1985 saw her as a high paid assassin in John Huston’s satiric masterpiece Prizzi’s Honor with Jack Nicholson, another dramatic move away from the types of roles she played before. She won her second consecutive Golden Globe, but when Oscar nominations were announced, she was the only member of the principle cast to be overlooked.

It was Francis Coppola’s sublime Peggy Sue Got Married that finally brought Turner her one and only Academy Award nomination. She would lose to Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God.

Turner closed the decade with two more triumphant roles: William Hurt’s suffering wife in Lawrence Kasden’s The Accidental Tourist and Michael Douglas’s vengeful wife in Danny DeVito’s underrated gem The War of the Roses.

The outrageous cult film Serial Mom, directed by John Waters, marked one of her last major leading roles.

The next few decades she appeared onscreen intermittently, mostly because of her being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (which she did not make public until years later) which led to alcohol consumption. The disease progressed for eight years, and then she went into remission. The press was merciless in their attacks on her appearance.

The stage has also been a creative home for Turner. She made her Broadway debut in 1978 in Gemini. Her theater highlights include the 1990 revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tony nomination), Indiscretions, The Graduate (with that famous nude scene), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and High.

Kathleen has also worked on numerous TV series (Friends, Californication, The Kominsky Method to name a few) and is back on the big screen in two new films this fall. Lindsay MacKay’s The Swearing Jar, which opened in theaters on September 23, 2022, is a fascinating film about a young couple (Adelaide Clemens and Patrick J. Adams) going through relationship issues where Turner plays Adams’ mother, Bev, a complicated woman who has a tempestuous relationship with her son.

Coming in November, she appears as the crusty, mean, and scene-stealing Aunt Hilda in Dean Craig’s comedy The Estate about a group of cousins played by Toni Collette, Anna Faris, Rosemarie DeWitt, and David Duchovny who will do anything to inherit Aunt Hilda’s money.

Awards Daily was delighted to ZoomChat with the refreshingly honest actor about her truly remarkable film career.