EXCLUSIVE: How Kathleen Turner's Decades-Long Battle With Painful Disease Completely Derailed Her Entire Career – And Led The Former Sex Symbol To Self-Medicate with Alcohol
Kathleen Turner's disease derailed her career and pushed the former sex symbol toward alcohol use.
April 23 2025, Published 6:00 a.m. ET
Eighties screen siren Kathleen Turner was caught on camera shuffling through the streets of New York City and relying on a walker to remain upright, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The 70-year-old former bombshell stopped to catch her breath while passersby seemed not to recognize the onetime sex symbol who steamed up the big screen in blockbusters such as Body Heat and Romancing the Stone.
‘'Body Heat' co-star William Hurt once matched Kathleen Turner's on-screen fire – now, she leans on a walker as arthritis dims the flame.
Turner has admitted to suffering through a decades-long battle with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, which derailed her career and led to self-medicating with booze to ease her pain.
"It was incredibly stupid," she once confessed. "I had this thing in my head where I thought: 'I'm not taking pain pills they are addictive and dangerous.' But it was okay to have that second or third vodka."
Despite stepping away from 'A Little Night Music,' Broadway favorite Stephen Sondheim’s legacy still echoes through Turner's passion for the stage.
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And while she has put drinking in the past, her pain continues to progress, even forcing her to drop out of a passion project production of A Little Night Music last summer in Maine, just two shows before the end of its run.
"Kathleen's a fighter," said a source. "She'll never give in to this disease."
