Background and career
Mary Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954) is an American actress. Known for her deep, husky voice, she is the recipient of two Golden Globes, as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Grammy, and two Tony Awards. After debuting both off and on Broadway in 1977, followed by her television debut as Nola Dancy Aldrich on the NBC soap opera The Doctors (1978–1979), Turner rose to prominence with her portrayal of Matty Walker in Body Heat (1981), which brought her a reputation as a sex symbol. She worked solidly throughout the 1980s, in films such as The Man with Two Brains (1983), Crimes of Passion, Romancing the Stone (both 1984), Prizzi's Honor, The Jewel of the Nile (both 1985), Switching Channels, The Accidental Tourist (both 1988), and The War of the Roses (1989). For her portrayal of the title character in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Turner was nominated for the 1987 Academy Award for Best Actress. Subsequent credits include V.I. Warshawski (1991), Serial Mom (1994), Baby Geniuses, The Virgin Suicides (both 1999), Beautiful (2000), Marley & Me (2008), and Dumb and Dumber To (2014). Outside film, Turner guest-starred as Sue Collini on Showtime's Californication (2009) and Roz Volander on Netflix's The Kominsky Method (2019–2021). She also played Charles Bing, the transgender father of Chandler Bing, on the seventh season of Friends (2001). Turner's voice work includes Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), as well as characters on television series such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and Rick and Morty.
Born June 19, 1954 in Springfield, Missouri to Patsy (née Magee) and Allen Richard Turner, a U.S. Foreign Service officer who grew up in China (where Turner's great-grandfather had been a Methodist missionary), Mary Kathleen Turner is the third of four children. She is the only one of her parents' children to be born in the United States. She has a sister, Susan, and two brothers. Raised in a strictly conservative Christian home, Turner's interest in performing was discouraged by both of her parents: "My father was of missionary stock", she later explained, "so theater and acting were just one step up from being a streetwalker, you know? So when I was performing in school, he would drive my mom [there] and sit in the car. She'd come out at intermissions and tell him, 'She's doing very well.'" Owing to her father's position with the Foreign Service, Turner grew up in Canada, Cuba, Venezuela, and in London, England. She attended high school at The American School in London, graduating in 1972. "The start of real acting for me began during high school in London", she stated in her 2008 memoir. "There were seven of us who were sort of a theater mafia. We produced, directed, acted, chose the plays, got one teacher fired and another one hired." Her father died of a coronary thrombosis one week before her graduation, and the family returned to Springfield, Missouri. At the age of 19, Turner began volunteering at a local Planned Parenthood office. She attended Southwest Missouri State University for two years, studying theater. During this period, director Herbert Blau saw her performance in The House of Blue Leaves. Blau invited her to spend her senior year at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977. During that period, Turner acted in several productions directed by film and stage director Steve Yeager.
In 1973, Turner spent the summer with her mother in Midland, Texas. There, at the Yucca Theater, Turner made history when she was cast as the first female villain in the Summer Mummers 1973 melodrama, Plodding Among the Planets. Several months after moving to New York City in 1977, Turner took over the female lead in Michael Zetter's play Mister T, which co-starred Jonathan Frakes and played at Soho Repertory Theatre. That production marked her off-Broadway debut. Several months later, Turner made her Broadway debut as Judith Hastings in Gemini by Albert Innaurato, staged at The Little Theatre (later the Helen Hayes Theater) and starring Danny Aiello. It opened May 21, 1977, during the time when she was appearing in the soap The Doctors.
In 1978, Turner made her television debut in the NBC daytime soap The Doctors as the second Nola Dancy Aldrich. She made her film debut in 1981 as the ruthless Matty Walker in the thriller Body Heat; the role brought her to international prominence. Empire cited the film in 1995 when it named her one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History. The New York Times wrote in 2005 that, propelled by her "jaw-dropping movie debut [in] Body Heat ... she built a career on adventurousness and frank sexuality born of robust physicality". Turner ultimately became one of the top box-office draws, and most sought-after actresses of the 1980s and early 1990s. Turner stated in 2018, "Body Heat was a blessing because I went straight to being a leading actor and I didn't have to suffer any of this predatory male behaviour like many young actresses. It doesn't frustrate me that nearly four decades after that film I'm still referred to as a sexual icon. I got over that a long time ago." Because of her deep, husky voice, Turner was often compared to a young Lauren Bacall. When the two met, Turner reportedly introduced herself by saying, "Hi, I'm the young you."
After Body Heat, Turner steered away from femme fatale roles to "prevent typecasting" and "because femme fatale roles had a shelf-life". Consequently, her first project after this was the 1983 comedy The Man With Two Brains. Turner co-starred in Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote of her performance as writer Joan Wilder, "Turner knows how to use her dimples amusingly and how to dance like a woman who didn't know she could; her star performance is exhilarating." Romancing the Stone was a surprise hit: she won a Golden Globe for her role in the film, and it became one of the top-ten-grossing movies of 1984. Turner teamed with Douglas and DeVito again the following year for its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile. Pre-production for the movie was fraught with conflict, because Turner refused to commit to the "terrible" script she had been delivered. When she said no, 20th Century Fox threatened her with a US$25 million breach of contract lawsuit. Eventually Douglas, also the film's producer, agreed to undertake rewrites on the script to make it more acceptable to Turner, which led to much back-and-forth between the two as the script was retooled right up to when shooting started in Fez, Morocco. Several months before Jewel, Turner starred in Prizzi's Honor with Jack Nicholson, winning a second Golden Globe award, and later starred in Peggy Sue Got Married, which co-starred Nicolas Cage. For Peggy Sue, she received the award for Best Actress from the U.S. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1988's toon-noir Who Framed Roger Rabbit, she was the speaking voice of cartoon femme fatale Jessica Rabbit, intoning the famous line, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." Her uncredited, sultry performance was acclaimed as "the kind of sexpot ball-breaker she was made for". (Amy Irving provided Jessica Rabbit's singing voice in the scene in which the character first appears in the movie.) That same year, Turner also appeared in Switching Channels, which was a loose remake of the 1940 hit film His Girl Friday; this, in turn, was a loose remake of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur comedy The Front Page. Turner was the subject of the 1986 song "The Kiss of Kathleen Turner" by Austrian techno-pop singer Falco. In 1989, Turner teamed with Douglas and DeVito for a third time, in The War of the Roses, but this time as Douglas's disillusioned wife, with DeVito in the role of a divorce attorney who told their shared story. The New York Times praised the trio, saying that "Mr. Douglas and Ms. Turner have never been more comfortable a team ... each of them is at his or her comic best when being as awful as both are required to be here ... [Kathleen Turner is] evilly enchanting." In that film, Turner played a former gymnast and, as in other roles, did many of her own stunts. (She broke her nose two years later, filming 1991's V.I. Warshawski.)
Turner remained an A-list film star leading lady in the early 1990s, starring in V.I. Warshawski and Undercover Blues, until rheumatoid arthritis seriously restricted her activities. She also blamed her age, stating, "when I was 40, the roles started slowing down, I started getting offers to play mothers and grandmothers." In 1992, during the filming of Serial Mom, she began experiencing "inexplicable pains and fevers." The rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis was made about a year later. Turner's appearance changed after the rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, due to the condition itself and the side effects of treatment. In 2005, an article in The New York Times stated: "Rumors began circulating that she was drinking too much." In her memoir, she said: "Many people bought the assumption that I'd turned into a heavy drinker. I couldn't publicly refute them because I believed it was worse to have people know that I had this terrible illness... We – Jay, my agent, myself – felt it was imperative to keep my rheumatoid arthritis quiet." Turner's career as a leading lady went into a steep decline and she was seen in fewer successful films. After the symptoms appeared, she turned down a lead role in The Bridges of Madison County, which became a big hit. She appeared in the low-budget House of Cards as well as the comedy-drama Moonlight & Valentino, and had supporting roles in A Simple Wish, The Real Blonde, and Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides. She also provided voice work on The Simpsons in the 1994 episode "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy". Turner was originally cast as Zira in Disney's The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. Turner talked about the role and even sang a portion of her character's song (stating the film would be her singing debut) during an interview on The Rosie O'Donnell Show on March 10, 1998. She was replaced by Suzanne Pleshette in the final film.
