Watch: Kathleen Turner, 71, Makes Rare Red Carpet Appearance
Kathleen Turner brought the heat with her latest outing.
The 71-year-old struck a pose at the April 21 premiere of her animated film Animal Farm. Walking with the help of a cane, Turner wore a simple, flowy black button down with loose black trousers and black Crocs.
Although she doesn’t often make public appearances, Turner—who voices a donkey named Benjamin in the film costarring Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson, Glenn Close and more—has been stepping out in recent months, including at the Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man premiere on March 10.
The Body Heat actress made sure photographers understood she was no rookie, sharply responding to press at the Peaky Blinders carpet calling her by her first name, “You know what I really like, at this age? Miss Turner.”
Once the Animal Farm event came around, the photographers took note of her last request, referring to her as Miss Turner as she approached them. She joked, “You all got the message, didn’t ya?”
While she’s had steady work in recent years, there were bouts where the ‘80s icon took a step back from Hollywood to manage her rheumatoid arthritis, which causes painful inflammation in the joint areas.
“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t hold a glass,” she explained in an interview with The Guardian in 2023. “The only way I could go up and down stairs was on my butt, pushing myself. The pain is very bad because there’s no way to sit, lie or stand that allows you to escape it. People don’t understand because it’s not life-threatening. It will not kill me, but it kills your life.”
There were times where she was told she’d be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, but advancements in medicine had helped with her mobility. She detailed how the condition—which she was diagnosed with in 1993—impacted her career in a conversation with Salonin 2019, “Someone with the disease they did not understand is very frightening to them [in Hollywood].”
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Luckily, the autoimmune disease did not inhibit the Peggy Sue Got Married star for long. And while she’s had a number of roles throughout the decades following her diagnosis, she recently spoke about her positive experience working with costar and director Andy Serkis on Animal Farm.
“I enjoyed it very, very much. I mean, I’m not carrying the responsibilities that Andy is carrying,” she told Digital Journal on April 22. “But it was great.”
Though Turner never fully left the entertainment industry, read on to learn about the celebs that took a step back from Hollywood.
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Ellen and her wife Portia de Rossi have since moved to the Cotswolds, deciding to stay put in November 2024 after Donald Trump‘s reelection, the talk show host told to Richard Bacon in a July 2025 conversation at the Everyman theater in Cheltenham.”It’s absolutely beautiful,” she gushed about the English countryside, per the BBC. “We’re just not used to seeing this kind of beauty. The villages and the towns and the architecture—everything you see is charming and it’s just a simpler way of life.”It’s clean,” Ellen continued. “Everything here is just better—the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here. We moved here in November, which was not the ideal time, but I saw snow for the first time in my life. We love it here. Portia flew her horses here, and I have chickens, and we had sheep for about two weeks.”
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