Kathleen plays through pain barrier

She is the siren whose sexual chemistry with Michael Douglas lit up the screen 20 years ago.

Today, Kathleen Turner is barely recognisable as she succumbs to the side-effects of steroids she is taking to ease the agony of rheumatoid arthritis.

With her smouldering beauty and husky voice, Miss Turner became one of Hollywood's biggest stars in the 1980s, playing femme fatales in films such as Body Heat, The Man with Two Brains and Prizzi's Honour.

She starred with Douglas in Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Nile and The War of The Roses.

Her appeal was such that she was voted one of the 100 sexiest stars in film history by the movie magazine Empire, and once boasted that 'on a night when I feel really good about myself, I can walk into a room, and if a man doesn't look at me he's probably gay'.

But while fate may have put that sensation beyond her reach, the 51-year-old American is not about to surrender to ill health.

She is starring in the West End for the first time in six years in the critically-acclaimed Broadway-production of Edward Albee's classic, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Life has not been kind since her last appearance on the London stage - as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate in 2000. She caused a sensation then when she dropped her towel during a dimly-lit eight-second sequence to reveal a curvaceous but toned physique.

Since then the arthritis she first suffered more than ten years ago has grown steadily worse.

She had chemotherapy and took steroids simply to function normally, and found temporary relief in alcohol, ending up in rehab five years ago. She said in a recent interview: 'People were saying that the reason I looked so bloated was that I was an alcoholic, but it was actually the steroids I was on that were making me look puffy.

'In Hollywood, it's more acceptable for you to drink or do drugs than to be ill. Although it made me angry to have those things said about me initially, I never corrected anyone and just let everything wash over me.'

The illness also took a toll on her personal life. Miss Turner is currently planning a trial separation from her millionaire property developer husband, Jay Weiss.

'Having arthritis put a strain on our relationship because of the constant pain - when you're crippled you don't feel sexy at all,' she said.