CATTY KATHLEEN
Hitting out at Hollywood
Kathleen Turner has never been one to hold back – but the Body Heat star has really let rip in a new interview, targeting everyone from Dame Elizabeth Taylor, the cast of Friends, US President Donald Trump and many of her male co-stars.
In an unfiltered chat, the actress first took aim at Elizabeth, deeming her “not very skilled” when it came to acting.
“For a while, I felt like half my life was making her wrongs right,” tells Kathleen (64), who played several roles previously performed by Liz, including Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Kathleen, who has battled rheumatoid arthritis since her late thirties, also revealed that leading men Michael Douglas, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty had a bet as to who could “romance her” first – with none of them succeeding, she’s quick to point out.
Kathleen then set her sights on Burt Reynolds.
“Working with Burt was terrible. The first day Burt came in, he made me cry. He said something about not taking second place to a woman.
His behaviour was shocking. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t someone’s equal.”
The Friends cast? “I didn’t feel very welcomed… they were such a clique.”
And what about Trump?
“He has this gross handshake. He goes to shake your hand and with his index finger kind of rubs the inside of your wrist. He’s trying to do some kind of intimacy move. Yuck.”
The star also spoke of the period in the late ’90s where she was described as “difficult” by male producers and directors, largely due to her illness which also robbed her of her appearance, thanks to harsh drugs and medications.
“Rheumatoid arthritis hit in my late thirties – the last of my years in which Hollywood would consider me a sexually appealing leading lady. The hardest part was that so much of my confidence was based on my physicality. If I didn’t have that, who was I?
“At that time there was very little public knowledge about autoimmune diseases, so my illness was a source of bad mystery,” she says.
These days, however, her illness is under much more control and Kathleen says she feels more confident. “I’m a tree now where the trunk is strong and the roots are deep enough that I can branch out in any direction. And I’m getting stronger all the time. So let’s find out what I can do.”