Body Heat made her a star in the 80s. Then, after a string of hit movies, illness forced her to take a step back. The actor talks about her fights with directors, her rage at white male privilege and her return to the screen as a foul-mouthed political lobbyist
Kathleen Turner is pondering her acting career, a smile playing on her lips. “I’m becoming legendary, which I think only means that I have been around that long,” she purrs regally. It is, after all, more than 40 years since Lawrence Kasdan’s erotic thriller Body Heat turned her into one of Hollywood’s most in-demand stars.
Now, at 68, she’s coming to TV screens with White House Plumbers, playing Dita Beard, a foul-mouthed lobbyist involved in the Watergate scandal that ruined president Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. HBO’s new political drama revolves around E Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), two members of a covert White House special investigations unit. They were supposed to protect the presidency, but they ended up bringing it down.
