Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles » (Bargain)

Kathleen Turner is an actress and activist probably best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in Peggy Sue Got Married and Golden Globe winning role in Romancing the Stone. She is actively involved with local charities like the Child Advocacy Center and City Meals-on-Wheels and she chairs Planned Parenthood's celebrity Board of Advocates.

Gloria Feldt is the author of The War on Choice (Bantam 2004), a nationally prominent women's rights activist, and the former President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The New York Times bestseller SEND YOURSELF ROSES is now in trade paperback.


Kathleen Turner has always lived her life according to her own rules. The screen icon opens up about her own life—both personal and professional—the risks she's taken, and the lessons she's learned from her film and stage career, 20-year marriage (and recent seperation), raising her daughter, and her successful struggle with rheumatoid arthritis.

In SEND YOURSELF ROSES Turner recounts why she took the roles she did—from her film debut as the sultry schemer in Body Heat to her subsequent craft-stretching roles in Peggy Sue Got Married (for which she received an Academy award nomination), Romancing the Stone, Prizzi's Honor, The War of the Roses, and Serial Mom. And she discusses her recent resurgence on the stage with Tony nominations in her roles as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate and as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, for which she also won the a British Evening Standard Award.

Publishers Weekly

Turner has starred in films as diverse as Body Heatand Romancing the Stone; she's had rave reviews for her stage performances in The Graduateand Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Now Turner, with the aid of Gloria Feldt, bares her heart to readers in an upbeat account of her life and work. Turner discovered the theater when she was a teenager living with her Foreign Service family in London; from then on, she took every opportunity to study acting and to perform. Eventually, she landed the steamy lead in Body Heat. Playing such a sexually voracious female role might have typecast her, so she followed it with a comedy, The Man with Two Brains. As she discusses the other acting roles she's chosen, she's emphatic that "the selection of material and characters I play reflects my values." She's also been deliberate in her offstage life-her decision to marry, to have a child and to divorce. With great candor, she details some of her worst struggles, battling both rheumatoid arthritis and alcohol. In the end, she's realized it comes down to "taking the lead role" in her own life. While she may indulge in swear words a bit much for some readers, Turner's vision of life's many possibilities-even as she gets older-is surely inspiring. (Mar.)

Chapter 1 The Best Role Is Always Ahead 1

Chapter 2 Every Step Is Forward 13

Chapter 3 Let You Passion Embrace Your Talent 27

Chapter 4 See Your Moment and Seize It, Honey 47

Chapter 5 If You Fell Sexy, So You Are 69

Chapter 6 Stake Your Claim and make Your Stand 85

Chapter 7 Banish the Yet 105

Chapter 8 Separate the Real from the Reel 125

Chapter 9 Speak in Your Own Voice 139

Chapter 10 The Irony Strikes When You're Hot 153

Chapter 11 Wait fill the Choice Is Inevitable 175

Chapter 12 Don't Repeat Your Successes 195

Chapter 13 Send Your Successes 195

Chapter 14 Take the Lead, Lady! 237

Filmography and stage Roles 254

Acknowledgments and Afterword 256

Epilogue 261

Notes 264