Further Reading
Cahill, Jack.John Turner: The Long Run. Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1984.
Weston, Greg.Reign of Error: The Inside Stor y of John
Turner’s Troubled Leadership.Toronto: McGraw-
Hill Ryerson, 1988.
Nicholas Birns
See also Canada and the United States; Canada-
United States Free Trade Agreement; Elections in
Canada; Meech Lake Accord; Mulroney, Brian; Tru-
deau, Pierre.
Turner, Kathleen
Identification American actor
Born June 19, 1954; Springfield, Missouri
A throwback to the stars of earlier eras, Turner was one of
the leading film stars of the decade.
During the 1980’s, it was relatively rare for television
actors to transition successfully to playing leading
film roles. However, Kathleen Turner was able to
do so. A featured performer in the daytime televi-
sion soap operaThe Doctors, she achieved film star-
dom with her first cinematic role, in Lawrence
Kasdan’sBody Heat(1981). In this film noir reminis-
cent ofDouble Indemnity(1944), Turner played a sul-
try woman who manipulates a lawyer (William Hurt)
into murdering her rich husband (Richard Crenna).
Turner’s breathy delivery of such lines as “You’re not
too smart, are you? I like that in a man” earned her
comparisons with such 1940’s stars as Lauren Bacall
and Lizabeth Scott, andDouble Indemnitystar Barbara
Stanwyck sent Turner a fan letter.
Turner showed her versatility by playing a gold
digger in Carl Reiner’sThe Man with Two Brains
(1983), a farce costarring Steve Martin. The film
showcased Turner’s comedic skills, which she would
display several more times during the decade. She
followed with one of her biggest hits, Robert Zemec-
kis’sRomancing the Stone(1984), playing a meek ro-
mance writer who discovers her more adventurous
side while trying to rescue her kidnapped sister in
Colombia with the help of a soldier of fortune played
by Michael Douglas.The Jewel of the Nile(1985) was a
less successful sequel.
Next came the most overtly sexual of Turner’s
many smoldering roles during the decade: In Ken
Russell’sCrimes of Passion(1984), she played a bored
fashion designer who spends her nights as a flamboy-
ant prostitute. As withRomancing the Stone, the film
could be interpreted as a commentary on the failure
of some successful women to find fulfillment in their
jobs. One of Turner’s most unusual roles was in John
Huston’sPrizzi’s Honor(1985), in which she played
an assassin who marries hit man Jack Nicholson
only for the two to be assigned to kill each other.
Prizzi’s Honorreinforced Turner’s femme fatale skills,
though her performance was more tongue-in-cheek
than it had been inBody Heat.
Turner’s other notable 1980’s roles include an
unhappily married woman transported to her high
school days in Francis Ford Coppola’s time-travel
comedyPeggy Sue Got Married(1986); another un-
happy wife inThe Accidental Tourist(1988), in which
she reunited with Kasdan and Hurt; and her unhap-
piest wife yet, opposite Douglas, in Danny DeVito’s
darkly comic look at divorce,The War of the Roses
(1989). The number of Turner films with disinte-
grating, complicated marriages may be seen to re-
flect the decade’s unease with this social institution.
Turner also provided the voice for Jessica Rabbit
in the combined live action-animated film noir spoof
Who Framed Roger Rabbit(1988). As the title charac-
ter’s sexy wife, Turner huskily purred, in the manner
of Bacall and Scott, her most famous line: “I’m not
bad. I’m just drawn that way.”Impact Turner specialized in playing strong, re-
sourceful women who controlled their destinies. Be-
cause many of her films had strong sexual content,
she acquired a reputation as the decade’s most sen-
sual star.Further Reading
D’Agostino, Annette M.From Soap Stars to Superstars.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Fuller, Graham. “Kathleen Turner.”Interview25 (Au-
gust, 1995): 66-69.
Segrave, Kerry, and Linda Martin.The Post-feminist
Hollywood Actress: Biographies and Filmographies of
Stars Born After 1939. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,
1990.
Michael AdamsSee also Film in the United States; Hurt, William;
Martin, Steve; Nicholson, Jack;Who Framed Roger
Rabbit.The Eighties in America Turner, Kathleen 989