Kathleen Turner, now 68, reflects on her legendary career spanning over four decades since her breakout role in the 1981 erotic thriller Body Heat. She stars in HBO's White House Plumbers as Dita Beard, a foul-mouthed lobbyist involved in the Watergate scandal. Turner describes the show as 'very pertinent' to current politics, noting the persistence of lies in public discourse.
Turner's career has been marked by a refusal to be typecast, from Romancing the Stone to Peggy Sue Got Married, which earned her an Oscar nomination. She attributes her role choices to 'rage' against 'white male privilege crap,' a sentiment she has voiced for decades on issues like equal pay and women's rights.
She has often clashed with directors and producers, including a threatened $25 million lawsuit over The Jewel of the Nile and a dispute with Ken Russell over a nude scene in Crimes of Passion. Turner insists on script approval, a lesson learned early when a screen test in Los Angeles turned into a mud-wrestling film.
Despite a reputation for being 'difficult,' Turner asserts that being decisive is seen as a male characteristic. Her health issues, including rheumatoid arthritis, forced her to step back from acting, but she continues to work, recently appearing in White House Plumbers.
