‘I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way’: Kathleen Turner’s best films – ranked!

As she nears her 72nd birthday, we honour the actor whose ‘smoked honey’ vocals added to her vampy persona on screen, whether bringing Jessica Rabbit to life or crushing Michael Douglas between her thighs

Turner goes full-on drill sergeant for one scene as a dog-trainer, her forearms covered with scratches. Marley the irrepressible yellow labrador retriever knocks her to the ground and gives her a more vigorous humping than any co-star since William Hurt in Body Heat.

Unrepentant vileness is well within Turner’s wheelhouse and this bad-taste comedy gave her a late-career chance to bare her claws again. She is the cantankerous aunt whose family (including Toni Collette, Anna Faris and David Duchovny) clamber to get in her good graces – and her will.

“I mostly just groan and make all kinds of scary noises,” said Turner of this animated horror-comedy, underselling her inimitable voice work. She plays a woman whose spirit fuses with a house after being buried in its basement. Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty) called the director, Gil Kenan, a “hack” and the executive producer Steven Spielberg a “moron” after his script was rewritten, though he later retracted the second insult.

This is a Woody-Allen-esque theatre-land comedy strewn with star cameos: Tony Curtis, Whoopi Goldberg, Timothy Dalton and Turner, who appears as an acting legend miscast in the debut production by an up-and-coming playwright (Eric Stoltz). “Which are you, man or boy?” she asks the young greenhorn, then interrupts before he can answer: “Doesn’t matter, I’m partial to both.”

Turner and William Hurt are reunited with the Body Heat director Lawrence Kasdan, but the result couldn’t be more dissimilar. Adapted from Anne Tyler’s novel, it stars Hurt as a travel writer grieving for his late son when he meets a ditsy dog trainer ( Geena Davis ). Turner is his wife, seen in the first 10 minutes asking for a divorce before resurfacing later when she changes her mind. She does a decent job in the thankless role of a capricious scold impeding her ex’s happiness.

As the world’s least encouraging agent, Turner impatiently clicks a pen between her teeth as a prospective client ( Matthew Modine ) pours his heart out, then chomps on a sandwich during his swimsuit audition and blithely asks: “Do you think you could play a rapist?” As for losing her rag with him for turning down soap operas, Turner must have been playing that bit from the heart: her own career kicked off with 86 episodes of the daytime soap The Doctors.

The Bee Gee Maurice Gibb scored this ridiculous eco-thriller starring Rutger Hauer as a mountaintop recluse – half Rambo, half Dr Dolittle. When he isn’t shooting hunters, Hauer plays the tuba, sponges oil off gulls’ wings and relaxes in the tub with his giant python (not a euphemism). His sanctuary is imperilled by the arrival of a mercenary (Powers Boothe) hired by a Mr-Burns-style mad millionaire (Donald Pleasence) to steal eggs from an eagle’s nest. Meanwhile, Turner rents boats to tourists, but has the hots for Hauer (“I think you need me”) and permits him to suck her toes.