Kathleen Turner

Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954, Springfield, Missouri, U.S.) is an American actress who possessed a deep, sultry voice that helped earn her roles that combined seductiveness and menace.

The daughter of a diplomat, Turner lived in numerous foreign countries during her childhood and early adolescence. She attended Southwest Missouri State University for two years and then transferred to the University of Maryland, from which she graduated in 1977. Turner did commercials before landing a role in the soap opera The Doctors in 1978. Three years later she made a powerful movie debut in Body Heat, a steamy film noir about a woman who entices a lawyer (played by William Hurt) into a plot to murder her husband. Turner’s next big success was as a best-selling romance novelist in the comedy-adventure Romancing the Stone (1984), in which she starred with Michael Douglas. She also appeared in its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile (1985). In Prizzi’s Honor (1985), Turner played a contract killer who falls in love with her partner. For her performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), as a woman who time-travels back to her high-school days, she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress.

In 1988 Turner appeared in The Accidental Tourist, an adaptation of Anne Tyler’s novel that also featured Hurt, and she later reunited with Douglas in the divorce comedy The War of the Roses (1989). Her subsequent films included V.I. Warshawski (1991), in which she played a private investigator; the comedy Serial Mom (1994); The Virgin Suicides (1999), the feature-film directorial debut of Sofia Coppola; and Marley & Me (2008), a comedy starring Jennifer Aniston. One of Turner’s best-known performances was off-camera, when she provided the husky alluring voice for the cartoon sexpot Jessica Rabbit in the animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). She also lent her voice to a character in a few episodes (2000) of the animated television show King of the Hill and in the film Monster House (2006).

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Although Turner starred in some Broadway shows in the 1990s—notably Cat on A Hot Tin Roof (1990), for which she received a Tony Award nomination—it was not until the beginning of the 21st century that she refocused much of her energy on stage work. In 2000 she took on the role of Mrs. Robinson in a London production of The Graduate. She continued with the show when it went on Broadway in 2002. Three years later Turner portrayed Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a critically praised performance that won her another Tony nomination. In 2011 she appeared in the Broadway production High.

During this time Turner also made a number of TV appearances. She notably had recurring roles on Friends, Californication, and The Kominsky Method, the latter of which starred Douglas. Turner’s memoir, Send Yourself Roses (written with Gloria Feldt), appeared in 2008.