Kathleen turns on the heat

For a woman who has been described as a certifiable diva, Kathleen Turner has the warmest of smiles. We may be sitting in the library of a plush hotel but she exudes such intimacy that there's no suggestion of a superstar holding court.

Mind you, just mention the name Kathleen Turner to men of a certain age and they go weak at the knees. Her turn as the steamy sex siren in Body Heat is one of the most combustible displays of erotic power committed to the screen.

Then again, to many movie fans, Turner is the gutsy romantic heroine of Romancing The Stone and Peggy Sue Got Married, a sassy combination of strength and homespun glamour that made her one of Hollywood's hottest properties.

But then she hit Tinseltown's age gap and her movie career hit the skids. Now a strikingly attractive 51, Turner has no time for Hollywood's unspoken ageism. 'I'm not so much angry with Hollywood as disgusted with it,' she sighs. 'It's so formulaic.'

Cinema's loss is theatre's gain and Turner has returned to her roots, wrapping her trademark husky growl around Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and famously stripping as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. But it's her stellar performance as Martha in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's booze-fuelled orgy of marital self-destruction, that has brought the New York critics to their knees.

Now London audiences can sample Turner at the height of her powers as the acclaimed Broadway production arrives here. The deeply damaged heroine of Albee's modern classic is a part she first set her sights on as a 20-year-old drama student. So what is it about Martha?

'When I read the play, I thought, "I absolutely have to be this woman." And she's lived up to my expectations.' Turner says. 'It's so detailed and wonderfully written that night after night you keep finding new things. Martha has so many layers to unpeel, she's such a devastating example of a wasted life. I know that if I couldn't do what I wanted to do, I'd explode.'

Turner had to face that possibility when she was struck down with rheumatoid arthritis, a disease which knocked her for six - 'I didn't know how much my confidence was built around my physicality' - and fuelled rumours that she had a drink problem. Albee sensed the suffering she'd been through when he cast her as Martha.

did have a very hard time of it for a while,' she recalls with a wince. 'I was told that I wouldn't be able to work full-time ever again. I started to drink to kill the pain and that was very scary. I managed to pull back - but there were times when I let people think I was a drunk when it was really the medication. People hire drunks - they don't hire sick people.'

Physical therapy and new medication have restored Turner's health. But, given that Martha spends most of the night hitting the bottle as she and husband George go at it hammer and tongs, did she feel she was staring down her own demons?