The Arts Interview - The epitome of 1980s glamour has abandoned big hair for high politics. Hollywood's most terrifying diva, Kathleen Turner, talks to Rosie Millard about the British press, Hillary Clinton's chances and playing a 700-pound woman

When I scurry into the appointed room at Kathleen Turner's hotel, she is already there, alone, cigarette elegantly poised in one manicured hand. It is the day after fags have been publicly denounced in England. She can afford to be queenly: at the moment, her name is up in lights in the West End and people are paying anything they can to see her as Martha, the terrifying female lead in the hit of the season, the Broadway transfer of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee.

"I have always wanted to play Martha," she purrs. "I said it when I was 20. I read it, and decided when I was 50 I was going to get Martha. Which I did. It was kind of spooky. Ha!" Had she seen the famous Taylor/Burton movie of the play? "Parts of it. I never thought it was right. It was just screaming drunks." Has she ever met Elizabeth Taylor? "I have." Is she a friend? "No."

I'm not surprised. Turner is a perfectly valid, paid-up Hollywood diva (her headlines include roles in Body Heat, Romancing the Stone, Peggy Sue Got Married and Prizzi's Honour, two Golden Globes, and Jessica Rabbit's voice in Who Framed Roger Rabbit), but she has a gutsy urbanity one would never have found in an actress of Taylor's era. Within five minutes of the interview starting, she is observing the room temperature. And we are not talking about the weather. "Gosh I am hot. Yes, I have just started my menopause, thank you!" She grins. "It's most uncomfortable at times."

Turner revels in her apparent contradictions. She is a film icon who insists she always wanted to be a great stage actress, a woman celebrated for her looks who readily admits that she is best known for being the voice of a rabbit in heels, an American who considers herself a world citizen and is toying with the idea of moving to Rome. And she is probably the first actor in Albee's excoriating classic to play it for the laughs. "I always thought the humour in the piece hadn't been realised - the wit in it, and the joy in it," she says, grinning.

Although Turner is not quite someone you would describe as a hoot, she displays a readiness to share jokes that is rare for a woman who has spent decades doing the interview circuit. Moreover, she is up for discussing issues that the typical Golden Globe Best Actress would probably rather avoid. Plastic surgery, for example. "An actor friend of mine had Botox and was horrified to find that she then couldn't move her eyebrows. What can you do if you can't move your eyebrows?" And then there is her view on that big Hollywood no-no, age. "The week before turning 50 was hard. But when I woke up 50, I thought, 'Fuck you. This is who I am.'"

It's a handy attitude, particularly as older actresses, especially former sirens, typically get it quite hard in the press when they dare to venture out during daylight hours. Before Woolf opened, Turner was the recipient of some particularly vicious "reporting" from the British press, implying she had failed to maintain her looks in the manner expected of her kind. She snorts when I mention it. "The astonishing thing about these pieces is that they expect you to look the same as you did 30 years ago. Oh, it's all right for them to age, but you in some way are not allowed to. Which is, of course, ridiculous." For the record, in a chic suit and with immaculate hair and make-up, Turner looks diva-like for our interview, yet you feel that she would rise to her customary crisp responses even if she was dressed in a tracksuit, with morning hair.

So, anything goes. As long as it is smart. The main thing with Turner is not to ask anything idiotic, because she simply will not have it. "When I turned 50, I thought, 'I am not working any more with fools. Or bad actors. I just haven't got the time.'"

She is certainly up for talking about politics. "I am politically active," she announces. "When I'm not on stage every night, I am on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood organisation in our country, and have been for many years." Planned Parenthood is a federation of women's health clinics across America, providing sex education, birth control and access to that evergreen source of political crisis, abortion. "It's not just about abortion, though: it's about women's right to choose. The news media call these clinics abortion clinics, when they are simply healthcare centres. There is no other standard of free healthcare for women available in the country." However, she concedes that abortion is a flashpoint. "Yes, you can see abortion becoming illegal in America. It is a grave possibility. The whole question of the right to abortion is being hedged about. If you are under 18, you cannot go in without parental permission. You have to give the father, if you know who he is, a right to be part of the decision. All this sort of stuff. If you don't have a clinic in your part of the state, you can't cross state lines. Foetuses will have protection in the American constitution before women."

So, is Turner a paid-up member of the Democrats? "For a long time I was listed as an independent, until Pat Buchanan, who was right-wing and religious, took over the independent ticket." Her voice drops about two octaves. "So I had to get out of there!" Now she waves the flag from the sidelines. "I went over to the Democrats, but I am not strictly a supporter of the Democratic Party; I am a supporter of issues."

What's the problem with the Democrats?

"The real problem we have right now is leadership. Because we don't have any. Over the last few years, the climate in Washington has been so negative to anyone who opposes the Bush administration that people have to put their reputations on the line. Recently I co-hosted a radio show on National Public Radio. We would spend an hour talking about issues with guests like Walter Cronkite, Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem. We would get letters of complaint attacking us for being left and liberal and we said, 'Yes we are! You guys get enough coverage.' I got on a few lists with that one, I can tell you."

Doesn't she hold out any hope for Hillary Clinton? "I have my doubts about that. We don't want a celebrity woman president," says Turner dismissively. "We want someone who is really proven, someone with a really good foundation at that level, not just a star." But Hillary is a bit more than a celebrity, I say, and then panic about the possibility of having said something foolish. Turner nods. "Yes. She might be uniquely qualified having been first lady for eight years. I may have to rethink my position there." Well, that's a relief.

Martha, her fearsome character in Woolf, is preoccupied with the human cost of existing in a state of fabrication. It's an accusation that Turner levels at America today. "The parallel with the play is this willingness to live in denial," she says. "Living with illusion. We are in a state right now where we just accept what is said. We don't really want to find out the truth, because we'd then have to do something about this war, and our government, and the lies and deceptions they have given us."

We discuss the recent video footage of British soldiers allegedly abusing Iraqi teenagers. "Yes, I saw that footage. Most disturbing. But in that same segment of news, I saw a British coffin draped in a flag being carried to a plane. We have never seen that in America. We have never seen an American coffin being brought back home [from Iraq]. The one photographer who was brave enough to take those pictures was immediately dismissed from her position. This is the kind of denial that is fostered in our country right now."

She may sound like a refusenik, but Turner is not turning her back on the great American film industry just yet; indeed, you will be able to hear her at all the multiplexes this summer. "I have an animated film coming out called Monster House. And I am the title character. I am the Monster House." What? "Ha ha ha. I am the Monster House," she says. "I get into this huge fat suit. I was this 700-pound woman. You have 75 sensors all over your face and body, and you get into this black-box theatre, and there are cameras at 360 degrees which read all the sensors, all your facial movement. So that's my next animated picture."

From Body Heat to Monster House. In a world where Botox reigns and uniformity of brand is all, it's an impressively maverick journey, and one not without integrity. At 51, Kathleen Turner is right where she wanted to be all along, acting in serious drama on the London stage. "The West End isn't all it's cracked up to be? It is for me. It is for me."

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1, booking to 13 May. For tickets and further details call: 0870 890 1101

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