Kathleen Turner

I often play women who are not essentially good or likable, and I often go through a stage where I hate them. Then I end up loving and defending them.

I find the idea of today’s icons being teenagers incredibly uninspiring.

I think Europeans have enough tradition and respect for the experience and body of work of an actress that they don’t sell out to the new ones.

I’m very practical. What I’m reaching for is individualism for women.

Being a sex symbol has to do with an attitude, not looks. Most men think it’s looks, most women know otherwise.

Women are responsible for creating their own roles.

I have no desire to play most of the roles being offered.

I would certainly choose my jobs depending on the actions of the character. I won’t do anything that has to do with child abuse or women’s abuse.

Crimes of Passion, which is one of the best films I’ve done, will live strongly in my resume, even though it didn’t do well.

It begins and ends with money. It’s absurd in this day and age when we need so much money for education, health, for people, that a $100 million dollars can be spent on a film. It’s obscene.

I want people to like me. They don’t have to always like my characters, you understand.

I don’t believe in simply accumulating money, but I have the luxury to say that, because I have enough for all my needs.

I’m not very active politically. The causes I work on offer immediate, practical, accessible help, and politics has never meant that to me.

I’m very old-fashioned in some ways because of my father, who thought that being a public servant was an honor. Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society.

Get more women producers, writers, directors. Why should we expect men to do it for us? They can’t.

I never took to Hollywood.

My father was a diplomatic officer. As a diplomat’s daughter, you have to learn to present yourself very early on.

I never feel more alive than when I’m on stage. On film you feel chopped up, you can be acting from the neck up, or the hand, there is a lot of close up.

It never occurred to me that I couldn’t change things that needed changing or couldn’t have what I wanted if I worked hard enough and was good enough.

The older I get, the less I suffer fools gladly.

A woman my age is not supposed to be attractive or sexually appealing. I just get kinda tired of that.

At about 40, the roles started slowing down. I started getting offers to play mothers and grandmothers.

As I traveled from one country to another, no one knew anything about me. So I could be anybody, I could speak as I wished, act as I wished, dress as I wished.

A woman can plan when to have her family and how to support a family.

You shouldn’t get to live in society and give nothing back. People complain about their taxes, yet they do nothing for the community. That makes me furious.

If my ego was out of whack and I believed I could carry anything off, that would be a stupid risk. But so far there’s been no reason not to try anything.

I have a brother who’s a psychologist. He says three-quarters of the world are born feeling that they will be affected by the world; one quarter are born knowing that they will affect the world.

I’m not a New York snob.

What makes me angry? The education of children. How in God’s name can you expect to have a functioning society the way we teach our kids?

There are still women who are not living their own lives, but living through their men or their children.

My husband says I can do anything I put my mind to, but the truth i, the only thing I want to do is act.

This is not about abortion or the antics. This is about pro choice versus anti-choice and government intervention in a woman’s personal decisions about her life.

I rent houses in LA when I’m filming. I find the isolation there terrifying. There’s nowhere to go, there’s nowhere to be with people. I’m not a beach bunny.

I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress.

I think my mission is to become the greatest human I can. I know that sounds pompous, but what else do we have?

I always thought the point was to have a bigger life, to meet more people. So I don’t understand Hollywood.

The big gap between the ability of actors is confidence.

I had a great deal of pressure to move to LA after Romancing the Stone came out and I’d become very popular. But people came to me anyway.

I have health. I have a wonderful support system. I have the admiration of millions of strangers, which I do not underestimate.

I know there are nights when I have power, when I could put on something and walk in somewhere, and if there is a man who doesn’t look at me, it’s because he’s gay.

I do not admire young actresses whose foreheads cannot move.

I am certainly a liberal.

What we need is more women writers, writing for older women. There are some actresses who have production companies and create their own material, and I truly admire that.