Kathleen Turner

You can almost hear the ice clinking in the bottom of the glass as you read "Send Yourself Roses," Kathleen Turner's brassy memoir in which she dishes on everything from her alcoholism and rheumatoid arthritis to costars bad (Nicolas Cage) and worse (Burt Reynolds). Turner, who last week made her New York directorial debut with "Crimes of the Heart," visits Los Angeles to read from her book (7 tonight, Santa Monica Public Library). THE BOOK ISN'T LINEAR; IT'S ORGANIZED ACCORDING TO YOUR LIFE'S EMOTIONAL PERIODS.

Earnest and filled with self-doubt, "The Perfect Family,"starring Kathleen Turner, is a darkly comic family drama about the imperfect union between real life and the rigors of Catholic doctrine. Like Eileen Cleary (Turner), the hopelessly devoted Catholic mother at its center, the movie has lost its way. It makes an unsteady debut for director Anne Renton, and the screenplay by Claire V. Riley and Paula Goldberg is literal to a fault. The film's single saving grace is Turner, who channels that legendary Catholic guilt like there is no tomorrow.

Kathleen Turner, whose roles have ranged from the seductive murderess in "Body Heat" to the naive author in "Romancing the Stone," is expecting her first child later this year, her spokeswoman said today. Turner, 32, is married to real estate agent Jay Weiss. The sultry, husky-voiced actress was nominated for a best-actress Academy Award earlier this year for her role in "Peggy Sue Got Married."

You can almost hear the ice clinking in the bottom of the glass as you read "Send Yourself Roses," Kathleen Turner's brassy memoir in which she dishes on everything from her alcoholism and rheumatoid arthritis to costars bad (Nicolas Cage) and worse (Burt Reynolds). Turner, who last week made her New York directorial debut with "Crimes of the Heart," visits Los Angeles to read from her book (7 tonight, Santa Monica Public Library). THE BOOK ISN'T LINEAR; IT'S ORGANIZED ACCORDING TO YOUR LIFE'S EMOTIONAL PERIODS.

Sure, anyone can give someone the slip, but actress Kathleen Turner's slip costs $1,200. The slip, which she has been wearing in the play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," was one of 29 items sold Tuesday night at a black-tie dinner and auction for Easter Seals. The auction raised $30,000 for the charity that aids people with disabilities.

It is eerily quiet this morning in Manhattan's Riverside Park. The snow is gently melting under a sunny sky and the park is forbiddingly frosty. Suddenly, a full-bodied, sexy and familiar voice cuts through the cold air and here comes the woman behind it--Kathleen Turner. The actress, wearing a long skirt, boots, suede coat and newly cropped hair, is strolling through the park with Canadian actor Colm Feore.

Earlier in her film career, after "Body Heat " and just before "Romancing the Stone," actress Kathleen Turner found herself being routinely identified in newspaper articles as Kathleen (Scum Queen) Turner. The nickname wasn't one that she would have chosen for herself, but, at the moment, it was vaguely flattering.

Actress Kathleen Turner said Tuesday she's thrilled to be back on stage, particularly in a role she's yearned to play for years. Turner is starring as Maggie in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama began a two-week run Tuesday at Pittsburgh's Benedum Center. After that, it goes to Boston, Philadelphia and then Broadway. "The challenge is in the material, not in doing stage . . . versus film per se," Turner said at a news conference.

Prosecutors on Tuesday investigated the tangled ownership of the Happy Land social club to determine whether the landlords, including actress Kathleen Turner's husband, share responsibility in the fiery deaths of 87 people. The district attorney's office also said a grand jury had begun hearing evidence against Julio Gonzalez, a 36-year-old Cuban emigre who reportedly confessed to setting the fire at the illegal discotheque early Sunday.

Decked out in a lace slip and little else, Kathleen Turner's beckoning form looms over the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on West 49th Street, easily seducing passers-by from the two other marquees in view. Without a glance at the title--"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," that drama club perennial--you might think Turner's competition was "Lovers in Heat" at the World Porn Spectacular down the block, not Somerset Maugham's "The Circle," another Broadway revival playing under demure signage across the street.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Mention the name Kathleen Turner and you may think of her vivid film performances in "Body Heat" (her movie debut, in 1981), "Romancing the Stone" and "Prizzi's Honor." But the actress with the same sultry pipes she had as the come-hither Jessica Rabbit in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" has also had high-profile roles on stage ("The Graduate," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

No one who began her career as smolderingly as Kathleen Turner did in the 1981 movie "Body Heat" would ever seem destined to play Martha in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" But to see this now-robust actress, ripened in her middle years by life and the mercilessness of show business, slip into the disappointed skin of the boozy, loudmouth wife of a jaded professor is to experience a perfect theatrical storm of talent and opportunity.

KATHLEEN TURNER claims she's "never really seen an extraordinary piece of theater" in Los Angeles and hopes that L.A. audiences will finally be able to "see the quality of what theater can be" when she, incidentally, appears in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Ahmanson Theatre ["No Fear in the Face of 'Woolf' " Feb. 4]. She isn't satisfied with the site of the production either, describing the celebrated theater as being "like an airplane hangar or something." Dear Ms. Turner, I and many others in Los Angeles know "what theater can be" from experiencing extraordinary manifestations of it year after year in our city (productions that have gone on to become long-running Broadway hits)

WHAT a dump. The rickety table in a grimy little Manhattan office is littered with coffee cups and old newspapers. Steam pipes hiss in the old Midtown building and the windows are caked with dirt. The scene is eerily quiet on this winter afternoon, but then a booming, howling voice shatters the calm. Down the hall, actors are rehearsing for the national tour of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and Kathleen Turner, cast as Martha, is ripping into her husband, George.

The clock's hands are making their straight-up, high-noon salute as Kathleen Turner, every bit the sultry-voiced siren of legend, saunters into the Cafe des Artistes, air-announcing, "I'm always on time. The others are not." One of those others, Jason Biggs, dark-haired and still very much the charming and slightly naive goof of his film image ("American Pie") comes along shortly.

I was delighted to read Howard Rosenberg's column on narrators highlighting Will Lyman ("Sometimes, It's All in the Voice," Aug. 31). He is so good that I will watch a show he is narrating, regardless of what it is about, just to hear him. I think he is to our times what Alexander Scourby was to earlier times. What Rosenberg said about what the narrator adds reminded me of watching a program on Peru's Machu Picchu. It was narrated by Kathleen Turner and was not too interesting. Then I saw one on the same subject narrated by Leonard Nimoy that was much more involving.

The Hamptons are just oozing into happy hour when Kathleen Turner kind of twirls into her local watering hole--"Hi! Hi, you guys. Hi, Tomas," she says pulling off her dark glasses, letting the screen door bang behind her. In Hollywood, she is still one of the most bankable actresses, a post-modern, old-fashioned sultress who first steamed up the lens 10 years ago as Matty Walker in "Body Heat" and has spent the better part of the decade as the keeper of the Bacall flame.

Earnest and filled with self-doubt, "The Perfect Family,"starring Kathleen Turner, is a darkly comic family drama about the imperfect union between real life and the rigors of Catholic doctrine. Like Eileen Cleary (Turner), the hopelessly devoted Catholic mother at its center, the movie has lost its way. It makes an unsteady debut for director Anne Renton, and the screenplay by Claire V. Riley and Paula Goldberg is literal to a fault. The film's single saving grace is Turner, who channels that legendary Catholic guilt like there is no tomorrow.

Let's cut to the chase. A lot of women in their 40s will not undress in front of a mirror. Some stay married so they'll never have to take their clothes off in front of another man. And then there is Kathleen Turner, who is making her West End debut as the middle-aged Mrs. Robinson--in the nude. True, she is only naked for a minute and she is illuminated by a soft backlight, the stage equivalent of an airbrush, if there is one.

Dorothy McGuire, Mel Ferrer and Gregory Peck founded the original La Jolla Playhouse in 1947 as a creative summer home for movie stars like themselves, as well as New York theater folks who'd come to "The Coast" for TV and picture work. Soon, all Hollywood knew about the thespian playground amid the palms. Tinseltown veterans and recent transplants alike finagled to fit in their dates down south without taking too much toll on their more lucrative gigs in Los Angeles.