Kathleen's amazing change of looks during the 90s: what really happened

...in her own words - for once:

"While all this was going on, I had also discovered I was suffering from a severe form of rheumatoid arthritis, which was a complete and total nightmare.
I'd always felt I could do almost anything that required physical strength and skill. I took pride in doing my own stunts. And suddenly all of this was stripped away and my body could respond only with excruciating pain whenever I tried to move it.
My joints swelled up so badly that I could hardly walk. Some days I was in so much agony I couldn't even climb out of bed. Jay was very, very supportive. He must have been terribly fed up with my problems, though. The greatest shock to me was how I lost belief in my own attractiveness, my own desirability, everything.
With my loss of confidence went a loss of sexuality. That's a strain on a marriage, a strain that is multilayered.
My condition made sex difficult because, physically, everything hurt so badly that it was so hard to feel sexy, hard for me to be a good partner, hard to be intimate. There was no position that didn't hurt like hell.
When my pain from the illness was at its worst, I discovered that vodka killed it quite wonderfully. I didn't want to take painkillers because I didn't like the way they mucked up my mind, so I used alcohol instead. Stupidly, I didn't consider that alcohol mucks up your mind, too.
The drinking fed a self-destructive spiral. Like the drugs I was taking for the arthritis, alcohol was a depressant - and when I took them in combination, their depressive effects multiplied. I started to question whether life was really worth living.
Like the drugs, the alcohol was also a disinhibitor. And, in my case, an intense and immense anger would come out of me when I was disinhibited.
Eventually, I became dependent on vodka. I never drank to excess before a show; alcohol didn't damage my work, but it did damage me personally.
I lost the ability to know when I'd had more than enough to dull the pain. People would say I'd been delightful at a dinner party - but then I'd realise the next day that I didn't remember anything.
I could keep the facade of the nice person, the good girl, the charming celebrity, most of the time when I was working. But I'd drop that facade when I got home, where it was easier for me to shed the veneer of niceness, to stop making the effort to smile.
So inevitably, those who knew me best bore the brunt of my excesses. I now know that I injured Jay and damaged our relationship very much.
I hit my lowest point in 2002 during rehearsals for the play of The Graduate, which was about to open in New York after a successful London run. At the intermission, I peeled off to a restaurant to collect some shopping bags I'd left there earlier.
But when I arrived, I had a vodka. Then I had another vodka. And another. How many, I don't remember. At some point, I collapsed in the bathroom. Very discreetly, the manager got me up to the office and called my husband.
Evidently, I fought Jay when he got there. He had to call a friend, who came to help bundle me into a car. Somehow, I'd turned from a charming drinker who could be the life and soul of a party into a really nasty drunk. Nor was it the first time I'd been drinking until I passed out.
The next day, after I'd apologised to Jay, I went to rehearsal and said to the cast: "I'm having a drinking problem. I have these pills that will make me desperately ill if I drink. I'm going to give them to the stage manager and he's going to give me one a day. I will not be a problem again."
It was one of the most painful things I've ever had to do because I'm so selfcontained about my personal problems. I felt as though I'd failed others who were depending on me to carry the show. I also feared that when I stopped working and had time on my hands, I'd start drinking to excess again. So after the production closed, I checked into a clinic.
In rehab, there were women who'd killed their children while driving drunk. Doctors who'd performed operations while flying high as a kite. The stories were horrific; I could see lives in shambles before my eyes. I became more aware of what behaviour to watch for in myself, more aware of what the drinking does to me and those around me.
For about six months after that, I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. But, for me, it wasn't anonymous at all. I'd be waiting outside to go into a meeting and I'd hear someone say: "Oh, I have Kathleen Turner in my group." AA is supposed to offer a safe environment, but I felt no safety there. So I just stopped going.
To be honest, I was drinking to excess on occasion right up till two years ago. I'd be fine during the working week and then, on my day off, I'd drink too much.
Maybe I was looking for a release; maybe some of it was the boozy character I was playing. A lot of the reason I drank was my deteriorating relationship with Jay.
Not that I blame him, of course, because there was nobody pouring that drink but myself. And it was setting me on course for some very hard times..."