Flashback to 1986, when my 15-year-old hormones were in full force. I was just starting high school, and to me, Kathleen Turner was “it.” Yes, she’s a terrific actress, but I mean she was sex incarnate.

Just a hair over two decades later, how things have changed. Although not short on talent, she’s no longer an A-list draw. What happened? Lots, as it turns out, as she reveals in her autobiography SEND YOURSELF ROSES: THOUGHTS ON MY LIFE, LOVE, AND LEADING ROLES, written with Gloria Feldt.

You know it’s going to be more than fairly candid when the very first sentence is, “I am fucking exhausted.” That initial chapter seems a little scatterbrained, but soon she finds a casual groove, dishing about her normal upbringing, her catching the acting bug, her big break in Hollywood, her marriage to real-estate wiz Jay Weiss, her miscarriages, the birth of their daughter, her success on Broadway and – more recently, in quick succession – her struggle with a debilitating case of rheumatoid arthritis, which led to a vodka addiction, which drove “a wedge” in her now-defunct marriage.

Pain, alcoholism, separation and V.I. WARSHAWSKI is a lot to survive, and Turner gamely takes it in stride, offering advice to readers like “fight” and “just fucking do it” and “it’s best to enjoy the company of men as playthings until you’re about twenty-nine.”

But what you really want to know – and don’t even deny it – is the dirt. News reports already have spilled the beans on her less-than-enthusiastic – and potentially litigious – recollections of PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED partner Nicolas Cage, but SEND YOURSELF ROSES has plenty more of scoop where that came from, like her falling for a very married Michael Douglas during filming of ROMANCING THE STONE. Not to mention …
• On BODY HEAT director Lawrence Kasdan: “He has a terrible, terrible voice. … He reminded me of a Hobbit.”
• On BODY HEAT costar William Hurt: “He drank a great deal, did a lot of recreational drugs, loved those mushrooms. He loved women, too. I don’t know how many he went through during the filming.”
• On THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS costar Steve Martin: “Steve wasn’t much fun … he was quite stiff and unfunny when he wasn’t being funny in his film role.”
• On CRIMES OF PASSION costar Anthony Perkins: “Anthony had an appalling drug habit. He was doing drugs in front of everyone.”
• On SWITCHING CHANNELS costar Burt Reynolds: “Burt was just nasty.”
• On V.I. WARSHAWSKI studio Disney: “I will not work with Disney again. I don’t like their product or how they treat people, and that’s that.”

Yeah, the girl speaks her mind, which is exactly why it’s readable. It may read like Feldt placed a tape recorder between them and hit “record,” but there are far worse interview subjects.

After all, who else is going to put in ink: “Jesus, I’d like to have sex again, you know? Oh, wouldn’t that be nice. Good sex. Really good sex. I’d love to have really good sex. But I’m not at the point yet at which I’m that hungry for the smell of a man.” –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.