Kathleen Turner Biography

Date of Birth: June 19, 1954

This native of Springfield, Missouri, virtually consumed the screen during her film debut in Body Heat. Turner provided both the body and the heat in this film as audiences first caught sight of her sizzling on a Florida beach as she's about to lure a more-than-willing William Hurt into her web of deceit. "You're not too smart -- are you?" She says to Hurt in that film when they first meet. "I like that in a man."

The sultry-voiced actress who got her start on daily TV's The Doctors and wowed Broadway with her performance as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, went on to display a comic flair alongside Steve Martin in The Man with Two Brains and Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile.

" If you put the women I've played all together down the line," Turner says, "there will be characteristics in common that present what's important to me. They're strong, attractive, intelligent; they have a sense of humor."

Her sense of humor is something that has been tested in her later career as her kitten-with-a-whip personae began to wear thin and her landlord husband was convicted of building code violations that led to 87 deaths in a fire in a building he owned. Lately, Turner has showed up in various clubs singing with a blues band to mixed reviews.

Filmography

The Amati Girls (2000)
Beautiful (2000)
Love and Action in Chicago (1999)
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Baby Geniuses (1998)
A Simple Wish (1997)
Moonlight and Valentino (1995)
Serial Mom (1994)
House of Cards (1993)
Naked in New York (1993)
Undercover Blues (1993)
V.I. Warshawski (1991)
Tummy Trouble (1990) (voice)
The War of the Roses (1989)
The Accidental Tourist (1988)
Switching Channels (1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) (voice)
Julia and Julia (1987)
Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
The Jewel of the Nile (1985)
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
A Breed Apart (1984)
Crimes of Passion (1984)
Romancing the Stone (1984)
The Man with Two Brains (1983)
Body Heat (1981)