KATHLEEN TURNER - Getting On With MY LIFE

THE ACCLAIMED ACTRESS HAS FOUND A SAFE HARBOR IN HER BATTLE WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

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As foul-mouthed political lobbyist Dita Beard, Kathleen Turner steals every scene in which she appears in the HBO miniseries White House Plumbers. Kathleen notes that Dita was a survivor. “She’s the only one who ended up well, with a horse farm in Virginia, where she lived happily ever after with her daughter,” she says.

At 68, the veteran actress is also enjoying the good life. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the height of her career in the early 1990s, Kathleen struggled for years with pain, stiffness and the nasty side effects of steroid treatment. Today, her disease is in remission, allowing her to seek out juicy acting roles again. “I wouldn’t accept it,” she says of the chronic illness, which a doctor told her would put her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. “That was almost 30 years ago,” says Kathleen. “And I look at what I’ve done in 30 years and I think: ‘Well, go to hell!’”