The Queen of Rock and Roll and eight-time Grammy winner Tina Turner spent most of her career on the music stage. But industry veterans – who died on Wednesday at 83 — she had serious acting aspirations, which says not only how many roles were limited for black women in Hollywood at the time, but the types of parts she was being offered.
It stars Steven Spielberg in the lead role. purple colour, which featured Whoopi Goldberg and earned the actress-comedian an Academy Award nomination. (The Tony-winning stage musical of Alice Walker’s famous book about a black woman living in the 1900s South is getting a movie of its own this December.) starring Fantasia Barrino and Halle Bailey,
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a revived in 1986 interview with lucy cinecittaTurner speaks about why she turned down the role, telling interviewer and Italian television host Serena Dandini that it reflects “too much on my life with my ex-husband” (Ike Turner).
“I mean, I’m always talking to the press about my life and now to do a movie? I’m just getting myself down. I’m trying to forget the past because it’s happened. . It’s over. I’ve ended that part of my life, and I’m not going to do any part that reminds me of what I’ve already lived,” she said at the time. “I think Steve understood that I couldn’t do it for that reason, finally, when I expressed exactly what it was.”
Turner also turned down other parts in Hollywood after her memorable role as The Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s 1975 film petty soldier, Turner said that while she and David Bowie were ultimately up for the part, it was going to her. But when she took it on, she had no idea she would be playing a character who uses sex work to lure her victims. Still, she said, it was her “first feeling of representing something else and carrying the load as well.”
“I took part because I got a chance to be this crazy woman and do all these things, and when they gave me the needle, I went, ‘Oh, I’m promoting drugs!'” she said with a laugh. . “Then I said, ‘Oh, well, but it’s acting,’ because when you’re acting, you’re portraying something or someone’s life.”
Turner, who said Russell had reservations about her before seeing her perform, said she was very excited to take on the role, which required about a week of filming. she’ll go next to george miller’s star mad Max sequel, beyond the thunderdome, A role she loved because it allowed her to be physical.
“She was a warrior woman before,” Turner said, adding that she was looking for roles as a woman. terminator And Foreigner, “It’s the warrior woman part that I want. I want the physical body. I want to drive machines, fight. I want to be physical. I still need that excitement.
Instead, Turner said that “no one asked” before or when she was a child, despite “always” wanting to act. petty soldier, “Black women had no part,” she told the interviewer. She said, “There are movies today because you just need to be a good actress. But back in the ’60s and ’70s, there were no parts for women, for black women.
And even when the scripts started coming in, he said he was repeatedly offered roles as a “hooker”.
“Really street, really hooker. No crazy woman, no machine, nothing just straight whore. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be on screen just to be up there. I wanted to do something that Something that people will remember me for. Something that I enjoy and that I can be proud of,” she explained. “I watch Acid Queen now and I cringe when I see how terrible it was. Still, people loved it and they remembered it. So I just didn’t take part because there was nothing in it.” was not right mad Max.,
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