Possessing poise reminiscent of the Hollywood divas of old, Kathleen Turner parlayed her blonde, sultry looks and sexy, smoky voice to overnight stardom with her feature debut as William Hurt's seductive temptress in "Body Heat" (1981), Lawrence Kasdan's contemporary film noir. Her unforgettable temperature-raising performance established her femme fatale persona and prompted Barbara Stanwyck to write and say that the only actress who could have played Matty Walker better was Barbara Stanwyck. Turner, who speaks five languages and acquired her presence honestly enough as the globe-trotting daughter of a foreign diplomat, experienced a rather meteoric rise through the ranks, although like most, she had trouble remaining at the heights she reached. Though her father's death deposited her broken-hearted in her mother's home state of Missouri, she threw herself into life as a student actress and landed an agent within a month of her 1977 arrival in NYC. Work Off-Broadway led to her role as social-climbing Nola Dancy Aldrich on the NBC daytime drama "The Doctors", and she debuted on Broadway in "Gemini" in 1978.
While shooting "Body Heat", Turner felt self-conscious, sure that she looked ridiculous and that all her supposedly smoldering glances would leave the audience laughing, but seeing the film made her realize for the first time that indeed she was sexy. She went on to specialize in sensuous, aggressive roles like Steve Martin's gold-digging wife in Carl Reiner's "The Man with Two Brains" (1982), a business woman-turned-prostitute in Ken Russell's "Crimes of Passion" (1984), and the cold-hearted hit-woman in John Huston's Mafia comedy, "Prizzi's Honor" (1985), at one point notoriously saying, "When I'm really hot I can walk into a room and if a man doesn't look at me, he's probably gay." Yet she also proved a likable comedienne in films ranging from the old-fashioned adventure yarn "Romancing the Stone" (1984) to Danny De Vito's blackly humorous study in marital breakdown, "The War of the Roses" (1989), both opposite Michael Douglas. The success of "Romancing the Stone", in which Turner was cast as romance novelist Joan Wilder and Douglas a professional adventurer, triggered the 1985 sequel, "Jewel of the Nile" (in which their characters wed), but it took a $25 million lawsuit on the part of the studio to make Turner honor her contract for what she perceived was a vastly inferior script compared with the original.
Turner replaced Debra Winger in Francis Ford Coppola's "Peggy Sue Got Married" (1986) and earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her tour de force performance as a mature woman inhabiting the body of her teenage self. Absolutely believable as a 42-year-old in a 17-year-old body (the actress was 32 at the time), she captured youthful insouciance through her altered speech and body movements and was the best thing about the sentimental picture. After the psychological thriller "Julia and Julia" (1987) cast her as a woman caught between a happily married existence with Gabriel Byrne and a dangerous affair with Sting, she lent her distinctive vocal talents to the sexy cartoon character Jessica Rabbit ("I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way") in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". She then reteamed with Hurt and Kasdan for "The Accidental Tourist" (both 1988), playing the former's emotionally distant spouse. Though Geena Davis stole the show (and took home a supporting actress Oscar) as the flamboyant dog-walker and new love interest for Hurt, Turner was compelling and sympathetic as a woman deeply scarred by the death of her 12-year-old son. She also starred that year with Burt Reynolds and Christopher Reeves in "Switching Channels", a slapdash TV newsroom-updating of "The Front Page".
Turner gave a much-applauded, Tony-nominated portrayal as Maggie in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in 1990, but the new decade would not bode well for the maturing actress' box office clout. The detective film "V.I. Warshawski" (1991), the small-scale medical drama "House of Cards", and the "Thin Man" wannabe "Undercover Blues" (both 1993) all failed with critics and the public, so Turner opted for lighter material with John Waters' "Serial Mom" (1994). Playing a modern-day homemaker with the looks of June Cleaver and the heart of Charles Manson, she at once frightened and delighted audiences but could not re-ignite her feature career. (This also was complicated in part by health problems which led to rumors of substance abuse which also had a detrimental effect on her ability to find work.) During the 80s, Turner had kept her TV appearances to a minimum, hosting NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in 1985 and 1989. Now she turned to the small screen with a vengeance. Her experience at the helm of "Leslie's Folly" (1994), part of Showtime's "Directed By" series, did not earn her subsequent directorial work, and she produced and starred in her network TV-movie debut, "Friends at Last" (CBS, 1995), showing that she was more than willing to be unglamorous in her new life as a character actress. She also became a frequent narrator and host of TV documentaries.
Relegated to either supporting roles (e.g., the stepmother in "Moonlight and Valentino" 1995) or comic villains (e.g., the wicked fairy in 1997's "A Simple Wish"; a nefarious scientist obsessing over "Baby Geniuses" 1999) in films, Turner enjoyed more success onstage, portraying an incestuous mother in a Broadway production of Jean Cocteau's "Indiscretions" (1995) and later venturing to London to act in "Our Betters" and perform a one-woman show about Tallulah Bankhead. She filmed a pilot, "Style and Substance", about a Martha Stewart-like figure, for CBS in 1997, but left the project over creative differences and was replaced by Jean Smart. After appearing as a TV anchorwoman in TNT's satirical "Legalese" (1998), Turner was excellent in her understated turn as the rigid, dowdy mother of five in Sophia Coppola's feature directing debut, "The Virgin Suicides" (2000). She then returned to the British stage as Mrs. Robinson in a theatrical adaptation of "The Graduate" (2000).