Kathleen Turner

Kathleen Turner stays composed while William Hurt makes a fool of himself in Body Heat (1981). As Matty Walker, she lets his Ned Racine look eager enough for both of them, making their conversations feel unequal without advertising a threat. We felt uneasy watching them together because her self-possession made his willingness to excuse himself so apparent. Lawrence Kasdan gives attraction room to cloud judgement, and Turner makes it credible that this man would stop examining his own conduct. The film sometimes borrows too conspicuously from older noir, but the performances give its familiar temptations enough weight to make it worth an evening.

That breakthrough could have confined her to variations on the same woman. Romancing the Stone (1984) made use of her comic timing and physical expressiveness, while Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) showed how much feeling she could convey through body language. As Jessica Rabbit's voice in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), she could play with the screen persona she had already established. Later she concentrated more on stage roles, voice work and supporting film parts. The danger in remembering only the voice is that it overlooks how much she achieves by declining to press a point.

In Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (2000), that restraint makes Mrs Lisbon's certainty hard to watch. Turner and James Woods give the parents the confidence of people who consider their household rules perfectly ordinary. She does not play the mother as someone waiting to be exposed as a villain, which makes the strictness more disturbing. Coppola allows adult authority to look faintly ridiculous without losing sight of what it does to the girls. Our reservation is with the film's attention: the sisters can recede behind the boys' fascination, even though the performances make this household so recognisable.

The deep, husky voice is easy to recognise, but treating it as the whole performance misses her judgement about how much to show. Hurt's eagerness gives her composure something to work against; Woods's matching confidence makes the Lisbon parents more troubling together. These are performances that depend on attending to the other actor, even when Turner's character seems certain of having nothing to learn. Start with Body Heat, and do not mistake her calm for an invitation to relax.