“I’m f***ing exhausted,” says Kathleen Turner at the start of her memoir. The actress frequently makes such declarations in her book, and we nod. She talks, we listen — it is surely the correct order of things. Turner swears well and writes big. She promises us access to all areas, from how she was found passed out on the floor of a Manhattan restaurant drunk as a skunk, to the reasons she thinks Newt Gingrich is a bastard. “Send Yourself Roses is my truth as I see it,” she says. “I do have stories to tell, and I believe in the power of sharing them.” It’s not that Turner didn’t think she was worth listening to before, she did, it’s just that now she simply must be heard.

The gestation of this memoir began in 2006 when she was 52 and taking a bow during the London run of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Turner played Martha, the Elizabeth Taylor part). Her 25-year career flashed before her eyes (Prizzi’s Honour, The Accidental Tourist, The Graduate on stage) and it struck her, “Now, that’s range. Now we’re talking range, guys. Anybody wonder about my range as an actress? Take a look on Shaftesbury Avenue.” The problem was her husband. He was doing her down at home, and down is not where Turner belongs. “I was hearing from friends and professional colleagues day after day what an extraordinary talent I have and what an admirable person I am. I like the person that people say is wonderful and great and talented. I think I’ll stay her.”

The early chapters tell of her cultured, travelled childhood as the daughter of a diplomat, her brief stint in off-Broadway shows and as a waitress in NYC, and her seamless segue into film stardom when she was cast as the femme fatale in the erotic thriller Body Heat at 26. She often refers to herself in the third person (“Kathleen Turner is a verb”) and is predominantly keen to remind us how sexy she was, and remains, despite her recent battles with rheumatoid arthritis and the bottle. “Hell,” she says, “I can even be sexy as a cartoon rabbit.” We know.

You must — you must — remember Turner in Body Heat. The only other actress with a physique that gobsmacking was the young Cybill Shepherd, except she had a bigger rack, which made her appear more vulnerable. I’m talking about that broad-shouldered, athletic size 12, a body made for twirling a baton, for flipping a steak, for wrapping around a quarterback. Turner’s Body Heat co-star William Hurt touches her and melts — his hair appears to be falling out, too weak, too thin to outface Turner, who keeps her chin held high throughout, meticulously poised as though balancing a rare vase on her head that cannot fall off. It wouldn’t dare. Turner says her mother kept her naked for a long time as an infant, “with a fan blowing over water to keep me hydrated so I would not die”, in the heat of the Missouri summers. This image of the exquisite miniature Turner bending even air and water to her will is potent. Forty-seven years later, this same infant would succeed in flagging down a fire truck on 9/11, demanding that the drivers transport her to assist in the rescue effort. Fifty-three years later, this infant only has to close her eyes “and concentrate and I can isolate almost every f***ing muscle in my body. Which is not usual”.

Such dogged solipsism absolutely controls the book, so there’s little on Turner’s co-stars and their foibles — but what she does tell is fabulously random. That Hurt’s drug of choice was mushrooms. That the first time Debra Winger met Michael Douglas she bit him (shades of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Kind of). Steve Martin is zero fun in person. And Dustin Hoffman resented the hell out of British audiences for not giving him standing ovations for The Merchant of Venice (“it was driving him nuts”). More of this please! More about your films! But, no.

Oh, this is a very mad memoir indeed. I challenge you to put it down for even one moment. Up Turner rises — unfettered now, vibrant, and gives us a series of the maddest chapters I have ever read (“Hillary Clinton said I should publish my speeches”) in which she insists she likes this or that friend because they accessorise well with belts. She accepts her genius (“all my experiences and all my power and knowledge and connections and finances. And the legacy I want to leave”). She celebrates her voice (“my voice has been called smoky, husky, sexy, tobacco-cured, scotch-laden, iconic . . .”) and her need to communicate on deeper levels (“at the spa that night at dinner, I couldn’t resist reading an essay by Maya Angelou to the whole group”).

She leaves her husband of more than 20 years, visits AA, supports the Long Island fishing community, lectures on stage technique at college (a personally designed course called Practical Acting: Just Shut Up and Do It!) and over the radio about the Patriot Act, challenges the Broadway audience (“f*** American puritanical hypocrisy, f*** it all”) and talks to old people on the telephone (“most of them don’t know who I am, which is rather sweet”). There may be four or five people left in New York who haven’t yet been helped by Turner.

Kathleen, I am in awe. Be madder still, please. Because, really, who gives a fig about sanity anyway? Nobody ever comments on it. So, take it away, woman. Go shopping in the third person (“Kathleen Turner wants a bacon roll with no salad”). Fall in love again (“God, I’m horny”). And after Hillary Clinton has projected your speeches on the moon, get up on stage and — quite seriously, it’s so obvious — give the best Gertrude in the history of the theatre. All the while knowing that this, that more, that everything, should be yours.

Thoughts on My Life, Love and Leading Roles by Kathleen Turner with Gloria Feldt
Headline £18.99 pp256

Read on . . .

Turner’s talk to The Times ahead of her West End role as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Grand designs

Producers checking Kathleen Turner’s future availability should turn to the end of her memoir, where she sets out her ideas for the next few years in some detail. First, there’s the nice house in Italy to buy (somewhere up “in the hills behind Rome”) and the films she wants to direct (“there are excellent opportunities for me . . . in Europe. I’ll take some low-budget films and prove what I can do”). Then there’s the teaching — “master classes at universities” — and the theatre roles — Sweet Bird of Youth, Beckett’s Happy Days, and, when she’s a bit older, Lady Macbeth.

“By then,” she muses, with what one has to assume is irony, “I’ll have legendary status and I can go on to my ultimate dream job, which would be playing the West End at night while serving as US ambassador to Great Britain by day.”

“Perhaps,” she signs off, “I could do this in the administration of our first female president.”

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