The celebrated American star of screen and stage Kathleen Turner will be honoured by the Montreal World Film Festival it was announced. Ms Turner will receive a Special Grand Prize of the Americas.
The honour includes a prestigious Award presentation preceded by an onstage interview covering her illustrious career. Screenings of several films of hers will also be presented during the course of the Festival. "We are very pleased to welcome Kathleen Turner to Montreal,” said Serge Losique, president of the MWFF. “Her presence here honours us and reflects the Festival’s reputation in the international film community.”
Turner made her television debut in the NBC daytime soap The Doctors in 1977 and her film debut in 1981 as the ruthless Matty Walker in Lawrence Kasdan’s erotic thriller, Body Heat, a role that brought her to international prominence. Empire Magazine cited the film in 1995 when it named her one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History. The New York Times wrote in 2005 that, propelled by her “jaw-dropping movie debut [in] Body Heat... she built a career on adventurousness and frank sexuality borne of robust physicality.”
Three years later Turner co-starred in Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote of her performance as writer Joan Wilder, “Turner knows how to use her dimples amusingly and how to dance like a woman who didn’t know she could; her star performance is exhilarating.” And her performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) earned her an Oscar nomination. Turner had quickly become one of the top box office draws, and most sought-after actresses, of the 1980s and 1990s.
Turner also works actively in the theatre, on and off Broadway, and has been nominated for the Tony Award twice for her roles as Maggie in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1990) and as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2005).
At the Cannes Film Festival in 1994 she presented Quentin Tarantino with the Palme d’or for Pulp Fiction. At the 2004 Cannes Festival she served as a member of jury.
The 2013 Montreal World Film Festival will be held August 22 to September 2.