Turner was born June 19, 1954, in Springfield, Missouri, the daughter of Patsy (nee Magee 1923-2015) and Allen Richard Turner, a U.S. Foreign Service officer who grew up in China (where Turner's great-grandfather had been a Methodist missionary). She has a sister, Susan, and two brothers. Turner was raised in a strict conservative Christian household, and her interest in performing was discouraged by both of her parents: "My father was of missionary stock," she later explained, "so theater and acting were just one step up from being a streetwalker, you know? So when I was performing in school, he would drive my mom [there] and sit in the car.
Stardom during the 1980s
After Body Heat, Turner steered away from femme fatale roles to "prevent typecasting" and "because femme fatale roles had a shelf-life." Consequently, her first project after this was the 1983 comedy The Man With Two Brains. Turner co-starred in Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. The film critic Pauline Kael wrote of her performance as writer Joan Wilder, "Turner knows how to use her dimples amusingly and how to dance like a woman who didn't know she could; her star performance is exhilarating." Romancing the Stone was a surprise hit: she won a Golden Globe for her role in the film, and it became one of the top-ten-grossing movies of 1984. Turner teamed with Douglas and DeVito again the following year for its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile.  Several months before Jewel, Turner starred in Prizzi's Honor with Jack Nicholson, winning a second Golden Globe award, and later starred in Peggy Sue Got Married, which co-starred Nicolas Cage. For Peggy Sue, she received the award for Best Actress from the U.S. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.  In 1988's toon-noir Who Framed Roger Rabbit, she was the speaking voice of cartoon femme fatale Jessica Rabbit, intoning the famous line, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." Her uncredited, sultry performance was acclaimed as "the kind of sexpot ball-breaker she was made for." (Amy Irving provided Jessica Rabbit's singing voice in the scene in which the character first appears in the movie.) That same year Turner also appeared in Switching Channels, which was a loose remake of the 1940 hit film His Girl Friday; this, in turn, was a loose remake of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur comedy The Front Page.  Turner appeared in the 1986 song "The Kiss of Kathleen Turner" by Austrian techno-pop singer Falco. In 1989, Turner teamed with Douglas and DeVito for a third time, in The War of the Roses, but this time as Douglas's disillusioned wife, with DeVito in the role of a divorce attorney who told their shared story. The New York Times praised the trio, saying that "Mr. Douglas and Ms. Turner have never been more comfortable a team ... each of them is at his or her comic best when being as awful as both are required to be here ... [Kathleen Turner is] evilly enchanting." In that film, Turner played a former gymnast and, as in other roles, did many of her own stunts. (She broke her nose two years after filming 1991's V.I. Warshawski.)
What is Stardom?
she won a Golden Globe for her role in the film, and it became one of the top-ten-grossing movies of 1984.
she won a Golden Globe for her role in the film, and it became one of the top-ten-grossing movies of 1984.