Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
ICON TURNER
When Faye Dunaway gently advised Kathleen Turner to have cosmetic work more than 20 years ago, Kathleen firmly rejected it.
Now 64, the star of hit movies such as Romancing the Stone, War of the Roses and Jewel of the Nile still bucks the trend amongst leading ladies by swerving the plastic surgeon’s knife.
She says: “Faye Dunaway once told me that if I did not start plastic surgery by the time I was 40 it would be too late. And I said, ‘Well fine, I won’t do it then’.
“I don’t want to be a Cher, where my face never changes or moves. At the moment I think I’m ageing rather well.”
Doing things her way in looks-obsessed showbusiness is testament to Kathleen’s steel.
After landing her first film role in Body Heat in 1981, she deliberately ditched the label.
“I was considered a sex symbol only for a while,” she says. “I fought my way out of it very quickly. The power of my attractiveness for years was indeed an asset. But that did not control my choices at all.”
She might not have set out to be a global sex symbol but she was. And she realised when Michael Douglas – whom she starred in three hit movies with – Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty kept calling her it wasn’t just to show her round Hollywood, but because they had a competition to bed her. None did.
Kathleen married businessman Jay Weiss in 1984 and they had a daughter, Rachel, three years later. In 2007 they divorced and she has been single ever since.
“I don’t think I want to marry again,” she says. “I wouldn’t have to any more because I won’t have any more children and I think that’s primarily the purpose of marriage – to protect a child.
I’m not dating at the moment. The only interesting men I’m running into are only interesting for a short while. Then they seem to need to be taken care of. And that’s the last thing I need. I’ve been there, done that.”
Incredibly, Kathleen managed to escape the sexual harassment that was rife in the industry.
“I think I was extraordinarily fortunate,” she says. “Because my first film role Body Heat was immediately a starring role and a success, I was never in a position that so many of these young actresses were of needing something from these powerful men.”
Was it also because of her “Don’t mess with me” persona that earned her the reputation as being difficult?
Kathleen laughs. “Well, my daughter always tells me I was very intimidating. I say, ‘No I wasn’t!’
“Was I difficult? I think that label always was, and still is, absolutely