Kathleen Turner

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2000

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Kathleen Turner. A versatile actress, she's been the femme fatal in films like Body Heat, parodied that role in comedies like Serial Mom, and played the romantic adventurer in Romancing the Stone. But, she says, ''I never play the victim, because I'm not attracted to a woman who doesn't try''. It's an attitude which must have helped her when she developed rheumatoid arthritis which left her severely bloated and in pain. Presently wowing audiences as Mrs Robinson in London's West End production of The Graduate, she chooses eight records to take to the mythical island.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Piano Concerto No 1 in B flat minor by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Book: Emma by Jane Austen Luxury: Roses

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive
0:05.0	for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My Cosway this week is an actress. It was just over 20 years ago that she was
0:35.4	happily pursuing her career off Broadway and in American television soap when she
0:40.0	landed the lead in a Hollywood hit. It was called Body Heat and the character she played,
0:45.1	sexy and ruthless made her a star. She followed it up with other glamorous roles in films such as Prits's
0:51.4	honour, romancing the stone and the War of the Roses.
0:54.7	Then illness stopped her in her tracks.
0:57.1	Rumatoid arthritis brought constant pain and immobility.
1:01.5	Today she's recovered and she's back in the limelight this time in
1:04.4	London's West End playing the seductive Mrs Robinson in the play of the film The
1:08.9	Graduate. In it she appears naked. A brave decision some say for a woman in her mid-40s but she has no qualms about it.
1:17.0	There's a definitive look for women she says which is practically fleshless.
1:21.0	Women aren't like that so I thought I'd do my little bit for us. She is
1:25.4	Kathleen Turner. Kathleen, you've done it. It's a great moment, but I can't believe
1:29.7	you did it without a quam. It's one thing to decide to do it. No, that's not, that sounds much braver than I am.
1:36.0	The director and writer Terry Johnson left it to me and it just was so clear to me that not doing it would have been more obtrusive and more, you know, stopping of the play, a real, that would kick us out of the reality whereas doing it with them propelled the whole play
1:55.8	It's quite a moment. Absolutely. And I just gridded my teeth and thought all right I can do this.
2:02.3	The funny thing was in the beginning
2:05.0	Terry said to me you know there's an extra beat you know you come out with a
2:10.5	towel and you close it over to the bedroom and then you turn and then there's this extra beat. I don't quite understand before you drop the towel. He says, is that a choice? No, no, it's not a choice. I'm trying to drop the towel.
2:21.0	And does it go on being that difficult or has it got easier?
	...

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