Home is where the art is, and for Kathleen Turner – best known for roles in movies from Body Heat and Peggy Sue Got Married to providing the voice of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit – it's unquestionably in the theatre. "I've always felt I do better onstage than on film," she tells me as we sit knee-to-knee in the intimate confines of a London club on Shaftesbury Avenue. "You get to use so much more of yourself, and the stage gives you back so much. Especially at my age – the roles that I can get now are much more interesting than anything I've ever read on film." | "Martha, my character, has to be past child-bearing age, otherwise it's not tragic. If she can still have a child, her heart is not broken..." | | Kathleen Turner on her role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? |
Turner is appearing just a block away down the street at the Apollo Theatre, recreating her Tony-nominated performance in Edward Albee's classic play of marital relations, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which she first did on Broadway last year. It's a role she set her sights on when she was in her early twenties after reading the play when she was at university. "I decided then that when I was fifty, I wanted this role!" So she played a long game, and when the time was approaching, started making her bid to do it. dream into reality "When I was 48, I started talking to Edward Albee's Broadway producer Liz McCann, who told me he really didn't want to do it again – he was working on new stuff and didn't want to be known just for his old stuff." "I said I understood that, but he doesn't know me! When I was 49, I finally got him to go to lunch with me. We didn't even talk about the play – we talked about politics and the environment, and luckily we were both on the same side. "As we were leaving, he said, so, what do you want? And I asked him if I could simply read the play for him. "So we brought a cast together including Bill Irwin to do one at the director Anthony Page's apartment, and at the end of the first act when we took a little break, he came over and said to me, "I haven't seen anything like this since Uta Hagen!", referring to the legendary actress who had first played it. "And I turned 50 the next week!" Her dream was finally becoming a reality. But why 50? "I always thought that the character Martha must clearly be past child-bearing age, otherwise it's not tragic. If she can still have a child, her heart is not broken." personal meaning Turner talks of her own daughter, now aged 18, whom she proudly says is an accomplished jazz guitarist: "She has a passion, which is all I wanted for my child, to have something she just has to do. That’s what gives all of life meaning." And the play has lots of personal meaning for her, too. "I've been in a long marriage, too – my husband and I have been married for 21 years.
 | | Turner played in London in The Graduate |
"And I went through a drinking problem for a while when I was extremely ill with rheumatoid arthritis," she tells me frankly, referring to an illness she now has under control. "You'll be amazed at how much pain alcohol can kill." She's also more in command of herself in every way. "As I get older – and older! – I just decided in my forties that there's no way I'm working with assholes anymore. I don't need it – I like myself and I like to like people, so I don't need that nonsense. "There's an extraordinary thing between the four of us in this play – so often, no matter what the size of the cast, there's a weak link, someone you have to carry a little more or work around; but there's no such thing in this case." Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs at the Apollo Theatre from 31 January, following previews from 20 January, for a season to 13 May. Box office: 0870 850 1101. | 
