Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
ROMANCING THE STAR
Heading for Britain with a show about her life, Kathleen Turner tells Rebecca Hardy how she and Michael Douglas fell for each other – until his wife told her to keep her hands off
Bringing a new show about her life to Britain, Kathleen Turner reveals what really happened between her and Michael Douglas
Kathleen Turner says she was far too long in the tooth to be propositioned by the likes of Harvey Weinstein. ‘By the time I ran into him I was well established,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t a 20-year-old anxious to make a career so he never tried any of his nonsense on me. The time I do recall being propositioned I remember I laughed. The guy said something like, “Let’s get to know each other better before we work together.” I didn’t take him seriously. By the time I realised, his moment had passed.’ Who was he? She clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head. ‘I can’t say.’ Can’t or won’t say? She laughs. The laugh is rich, as smoky as a backroom bar – both ravished and ravishing.
Kathleen, now 63, first smouldered naked onto our screens as a conniving siren in Body Heat 36 years ago. She wooed Michael Douglas in Romancing The Stone in 1984, divorced him in The War Of The Roses in 1989 and, after reinventing herself as a stage actor in her forties, wowed us all with stellar performances in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway, as well as The Graduate in London and New York.
She drinks, she smokes, she swears, she’s fiercely intelligent and talks about sex with a frankness that tells you she thoroughly enjoys it, although she’s been single for a decade since she divorced her husband, property developer Jay Weiss, with whom she has a daughter Rachel Ann, now 30. ‘Sex is healthy but a relationship has got to be interesting and challenging too. That’s why younger men have never worked for me because they haven’t lived. I was seeing someone in their late 30s. It was just a few dates but it really wasn’t very interesting.
‘Younger men are tremendously attractive. I like the chests.’ She spreads her hands over an imaginary torso to demonstrate just how much she likes chests. ‘But you go to dinner and there’s nothing to talk about. They’re not stupid, they just don’t have much going on in them. I need an interesting man, but you have to have the spark too.’
Kathleen has lots of spark – more, in truth, than a red carpet full of stickthin, Botox-filled actresses. I guess it’s called being comfortable in her skin? ‘I can honestly say how I look has never been one of my demons,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why. It just never was. As you can see, I enjoy life too much to diet. The idea that you have to spend every moment of every day thinking about what you eat, what you drink and how you look. That’s obsessiveness.
‘I remember playing Mrs Robinson in The Graduate when I was 45. It was a huge success so the producer John Reid said, “We’re going to Broadway.” I said, “I’m not going. Americans are so messed up about sex. I don’t need this kind of s***. I don’t want anything to do with it.” I went off and did another play but while I was touring I got a film script. It said the character they wanted me to play was 37 but still attractive.’ She pulls a can-you-believe-the-sexistpigs sort of face. ‘I thought, “To hell with you.” So I called up John and said, “We’re going to Broadway.” I was almost 48 when we opened there. I’d get letters from women saying, “I have not undressed in front of my husband in ten years and I’m going to tonight.” Wonderful things like that.’
Kathleen is from a generation of feminists who’ve been standing up to boys since the current crop of #MeToo Twitter warriors were still in nappies. ‘I remember as a child, living in Venezuela,’ says Kathleen, whose father was a diplomat until his sudden death from a coronary thrombosis when she was 17. ‘ We had a pingpong table so everyone would come and play at our house. I’d pretty much always beat them. I remember my mother saying, “Dear, you have to let the boys win sometimes.” I said, “Why?” I still can’t understand it.
‘ Sometimes I ’ ve wished I was more normal. I had a 22-year marriage and tried to be accommodating. I’d make the movie companies give me long weekends or provide extra tickets so my daughter and husband could come to me. But there was a sense in the marriage the effort was all on his side – that he did all the supporting – which made me feel guilty. It was one of the reasons it ended. I started to feel very oppressed. I thought, “Hang on a minute, you’ve done very well out of being married to me also.”’
The marriage broke down when Kathleen was appearing in Virginia Woolf. ‘I was doing eight shows a week, coming home and he was asleep or wasn’t interested. There was no companionship. I was going home, standing at my front door and thinking, “I don’t want to go in.” I thought, “OK, this is bad when you’re the least happy in the one place you should feel the most cherished.” That’s when I knew I had to get out. But we parted quite amicably. He started a new family and he’s got a gorgeous daughter who looks exactly like ours did as a baby.’
When Kathleen talks about her daughter her eyes soften. ‘I feel so blessed to have her,’ she says. Kathleen has been picking over these parts of her life for her cabaret show, Finding My Voice, which she brings to The Other Palace in London in April. Stories from her career are interwoven with classic tunes from the American songbook. ‘I don’t like the word “organically” but that’s how the show happened. My director Andy Gale and I found songs we liked which reminded me of a story. Suddenly they were connecting up and we had a show. It wasn’t until we finished that I realised I’d not brought up my rheumatoid arthritis.’ Kathleen was diagnosed with the crippling disease in 1992. ‘I said to the guys, “I’ve got to find the right songs and stories to bring that in without self-pity.” I loathe self-pity.’ She takes a sip of coffee, lost in thought. ‘I haven’t found a song yet that gets an idea of the constant fight it is day-to-day,’ she says. ‘Rheumatoid arthritis is my demon. In June I had a very bad flare-up. I couldn’t move my left arm or climb any stairs. ‘I do a lot of stretching before I get up, and I do Pilates and yoga three times a week. I make sure I keep my mobility because if you stop moving – stop trying– you’re in trouble. When it was first diagnosed I was terrified because they said I’d be in a wheelchair. I thought, “If I can’t move, I can’t act.” Acting isn’t just what I want to do. I was born to do it. It’s at every point of my living. The idea of not being able to do it was the most frightening part – that and the constant pain.’
Indeed, the pain was so extraordinary Kathleen began numbing it with vodka until she passed out during rehearsals for The Graduate in New York in 2002. When the show finished, she sent herself to rehab. ‘Alcohol plus Advil ibuprofen tablets does cure pain,’ she says. ‘By the end of the day I’d be in so much pain I’d start pouring vodka and popping pills. The problem is I didn’t realise how much I was consuming. I went into counselling because I wanted to learn about alcoholism. What I learnt was, I was not an alcoholic, but I thought it wise to stop for a few years. By then they’d developed medication for rheumatoid arthritis
But I’m glad I didn’t marry Michael Douglas ...he was a misogynist
‘We shared fervent looks and heavy flirtation’
which is incredibly effective, although Advil is still my drug of choice.’ These days, Kathleen enjoys a drink in company. ‘Because of the past abuse I’m wary of drinking alone or for reasons other than companionship,’ she says. ‘My idea of the best time is to go to a good restaurant and have a lovely meal and a glass of wine. You’re part of something. You’re not sitting alone.’
Brought up one of four children in Venezuela and London, Kathleen had skipped school to see a show in Stratford when her father dropped dead mowing the lawn at their Hampstead home. ‘We had an angled garden with high hedges. He was round the corner so we couldn’t see him,’ she says. ‘My mum wondered why he hadn’t come back in so my younger brother went out and found him. We were gone from London in a month. The foreign service says, “Thank you very much. Now you have to be out of the UK.” We lost the only life I knew.’
The family returned to Springfield, Missouri, where Kathleen remembers feeling ‘terrified and very insecure. I’d felt protected until then and suddenly there was nobody to protect me. Then I went to New York. I remember thinking, “Finally, I get to start doing what I want to do.” One day I was on my way to my temporary job. I was walking past the Metropolitan Museum and all of a sudden the fountains came on and I thought, “Oh yeah, that’s power.” I felt I had turned them on.’
Kathleen began appearing in theatre, but it was Body Heat in 1981 that helped make her a star. Three years later she was starring opposite Michael Douglas in Romancing The Stone. The chemistry between them is the stuff of Hollywood legend. ‘We had a wild crush on each other. At that time I was unattached and Michael was separated from his wife Diandra, so I thought this was a go. We were in the process of falling in love – fervent, longing looks and heavy flirtation. Then Diandra came down and reminded me he was still married,’ she says. They’d been married for six years at that point.
‘We were in a hotel in Valencia having dinner when she arrived. That gave her a chance to say in front of me...’ She reaches out to stroke an imaginary hand. ‘“You know we’re still married and I have no intention of ending it.” I thought, “That’s that.” The last thing I’d do to another woman is interfere in that. I felt sick. It was thrilling to be falling in love, then I felt I’d been kicked in the stomach.’ She shrugs. ‘But, in truth, he was a misogynist. We had lunch not long ago and he may be different now, but I don’t think he would’ve liked me finding my power as his wife so, you know, it’s probably a good thing.’
She and Douglas remained friends, but fell out over the sequel, The Jewel Of The Nile. She hated the script so much – the producers, including Douglas, changed screenwriters without telling her – that she threatened to pull out, earning her a $25 million breach of contract suit. She refused to buckle, and as a compromise Douglas rehired the screenwriter on the original film and the movie went ahead. ‘There was some real betrayal though because Michael had evidently recorded some of my phone calls with him which I thought was a low blow,’ she said later. Today Kathleen is rightly proud of what she calls her power. As well as acting, she’s a respected feminist who works tirelessly for Planned Parenthood in America and volunteers with Amnesty International. She has a ‘wonderful group of strong professional women’ with whom she plays poker. ‘The common factor is we’re all successful, working women. That binds us. Having a circle of women friends is probably the most important thing. The women stay in your life. I learned that from my mother. I’ll never forget something else she said. She never remarried after my father’s death. I was staying with her once and she said, “You know what I miss? The smell of a man.” That haunts me more than anything. It’s the smell of a man more than the sex.’ Would she share her life with a man again? ‘Sometimes I’d like to have a man take care of me. I’m tired. I’ve been taking care of people my whole life. But I guess I was hurt by the end of my marriage. Not because he’s a bad man. He’s not, he’s a good man, but I don’t want to be vulnerable again.’ She shakes herself. Plants a smile back on her face. ‘There’s a song in the cabaret called On My Way To You. It says, “If I had changed a single day that went amiss or went astray I may never have found my way to you.” Frankly, I’m thinking of my daughter then, because I think, “Of course I f*** up. Everybody f**** up, but I might not be the person I am or have the relationships I have.”’ Indeed. Kathleen Turner: Finding My Voice opens on 17 April at The Other Palace, London, theotherpalace.co.uk.