Kathleen Turner

“Diver” - song written by Grace McLean

-- read poem (by Jacqueline Suskin)

-- read lyrics

Kathleen Turner is an American film and stage actress and director. Known for her distinctive husky voice, Turner has won two Golden Globe Awards and has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Turner rose to fame during the 1980s, after roles in Body Heat (1981), The Man with Two Brains (1983), Crimes of Passion (1984), Romancing the Stone (1984), and Prizzi's Honor (1985), the last two earning her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In the later 1980s and early 1990s, Turner had roles in The Accidental Tourist (1988), The War of the Roses (1989), Serial Mom (1994) and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Turner later had roles in The Virgin Suicides (1999), Baby Geniuses (1999), and Beautiful (2000), as well as guest-starring on the NBC sitcom Friends as Chandler Bing's cross-dressing father Charles Bing, and in the third season of Showtime's Californication as Sue Collini, the jaded, sex-crazed owner of a talent agency. Turner has also done considerable work as a voice actress, namely as Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), as well as Monster House (2006), and the television series The Simpsons and King of the Hill.

In addition to film, Turner has worked in the theatre, and has been nominated for the Tony Award twice for her Broadway roles as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Turner has also taught acting classes at New York University.