Kathleen Turner reflects on her Hollywood career.

Superstar Kathleen Turner still vividly remembers how she and Hollywood heart-throb Michael Douglas almost had a sizzling love affair, while making a movie together.

‘I was quite free, had no complications, and my understanding was, Michael was separated from his wife,’ Kathleen says of their intense chemistry back in the ’80s, when she and Douglas were making hit film, Romancing The Stone.

‘He was separated from her. But suddenly the wife, Diandra, decided to come down to the set to visit him,’ she sighs ruefully. ‘So hmm, it looked to me like they were not separated after all! And that was that. It changed everything. It was too messy! I backed off.’

But had Michael already put the hard word on her?

‘I’m not going to tell you that!’ Kathleen chuckles in that distinctive low and raspy voice that’s melted fans hearts the world over.

‘But I have no regrets. About that, about anything.’

Kathleen went on to marry New York real estate developer Jay Weiss, but the marriage ended after 22 years. ‘I’ve been single for 10 years now and I absolutely love it!’ she purrs.

Turning 64 this month, Kathleen has many colourful tales to tell about her stellar roles on stage and in films, including Prizzi’s Honour, The War Of The Roses and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Like the time Jack Nicholson, Douglas and Warren Beatty – all drooling over the gorgeous young blonde – had bets over who could bed her first (none of them managed).

In Australia to meet fans at pop culture expo Supanova, Kathleen admits she’d be open to dating an Aussie fellow, ‘but it would have to be just for an evening or two – I’m not here long!’

During her starstudded career, she’s been called ‘bitchy’ and ‘difficult’, and by her own

‘I WAS QUITE FREE, HAD NO COMPLICATIONS... MICHAEL WAS SEPARATED FROM HIS WIFE’

admission, these days she’s feistier than ever. ‘Have I mellowed? Not at all!’ the two-time Golden Globe winner tells New Idea. ‘In fact, quite the opposite.’ But Kathleen, who first soared to superstardom in 1981 movie Body Heat, insists she’s only been called bitchy because she’s a woman. ‘If I’m decisive, I’m labelled “difficult” – but if a man is decisive, then he’s “decisive!”’ she protests. The star says Hollywood sexism has always repulsed her and she’s delighted that alleged sexual predator producer Harvey Weinstein has finally been charged. ‘That man has always put me off,’ she shudders. ‘There’s some awful element to him. ‘But Harvey never tackled me. By the time I met him, I was well established and he tended to prey on younger, less secure women – and that wasn’t me. ‘The whole attitude towards women, the contempt and misogyny in LA, is the reason I’ve never been able to live there.’ As for getting older, Kathleen reflects: ‘I don’t think of my past. I just think, what do I want to do next?’

For years, she has suffered from a debilitating form of rheumatoid arthritis, for which she had to take powerful drugs and often turned to alcohol.

The disease cropped up after she gave birth to daughter Rachel in 1992, leading doctors to believe it was triggered by hormonal changes.

The agonising illness, leading to 12 operations in 12 years, meant she had to turn down leading roles, and the medication led to weight gain.

‘At the moment I’m doing quite well,’ says Kathleen.

‘I’ve been trialling a new drug since March and it’s been working very well.

‘My number one rule is, never stop moving! Any doctor who tells you otherwise, throw them out of your life.’

When one physician told her she’d spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, she fired him.

‘My grandfather had a saying, and it’s my mantra,’ she says. ‘Whenever I said: “I can’t do this, it’s too much,” he’d reply: “Well you just have to, don’t you?” I live by that.’