Kathleen Turner mini-bio: Mary Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Romancing the Stone and Prizzi's Honor.
Turner graduated from the American School in London in 1972. She attended Missouri State University at Springfield for two years, then gained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1977. During this time, she acted in several productions directed by Steve Yeager.
In 1978, Turner made her acting debut in the television NBC daytime soap "The Doctors" as the second Nola Dancy Aldrich, but she was fired the next year because the producers felt she was "not hot enough".
Turner soon launched a successful film career, making her debut in 1981 as the ruthless Matty Walker in the neo-noir thriller "Body Heat". The brazen quality of Turner's screen roles was reflected in her public life as well. With her deep voice, Turner was often compared to a young Lauren Bacall. When the two met, Turner reportedly introduced herself by saying, "Hi, I'm the young you."
On film, Turner rose to prominence as the star of "Romancing the Stone" with Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. She won a Golden Globe for her role in the film and it became one of the top-ten-grossing movies of 1984. Turner reteamed with Douglas and DeVito the next year for a sequel, "The Jewel of the Nile".
After "Jewel", Kathleen Turner starred in "Prizzi's Honor" with Jack Nicholson. winning a second Golden Globe award, and in "Peggy Sue Got Married" with Nicolas Cage, for which she received a 1987 Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1988's toon-noir "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", she provided the voice of cartoon femme fatale Jessica Rabbit.
In 1989, Turner teamed up with Douglas and DeVito for a third time, in "The War of the Roses". In that film, Turner played a former gymnast, and, as in other roles, she did many of her own stunts. (In fact, she broke her nose filming 1991's V.I. Warshawski.)
Turner remained a film star until the early nineties when rheumatoid arthritis began to seriously restrict her activities. As the disease worsened, her career began to slide and she appeared in increasingly low-budget and obscure films including "House of Cards", "A Simple Wish", "The Real Blonde", and the critically scolded "Baby Geniuses" (1999). However, the same year as she starred in Geniuses, Turner also played a supporting role in Sofia Coppola's acclaimed debut film "The Virgin Suicides".
Despite drug therapy to help her condition, the disease progressed for about eight years. Then, due to newly-available treatments, her arthritis went into remission. She was seen increasingly on television, and, in recent years, Turner has found renewed success on the stage. After Nineties roles in Broadway productions of "Indiscretions" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (for which she earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress), Turner starred in a London stage version of "The Graduate" in 2000, a role that made headlines around the world.
In 2005, Kathleen Turner beat out a score of other contenders (including Jessica Lange, Frances McDormand, and Bette Midler)for the role of Martha, the aging, blowsy, alcoholic anti-heroine in a 2005 Broadway revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
As Martha, Turner received her second Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play.
She received a lifetime achievement award from the Savannah College of Art and Design at the Savannah Film Festival in October 2004.
Turner lived with agent David Guc from 1977 to 1982. She married a millionaire New York real-estate mogul named Jay Weiss in 1984, and their daughter. Rachel Ann Weiss, was born October 14, 1987. Turner was born into a Methodist family and has said that she has "taken on a certain amount of Jewish tradition and identity" since marrying her husband and raising their daughter in the Jewish religion. In 2006, Turner announced that she and Weiss were planning a trial separation.
