Guinevere Jane Turner is an American actress, screenwriter and film director. She has written such films as American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page and played the lead role of the dominatrix Tanya Cheex in Preaching to the Perverted.
Early life
Turner was born in Boston, and is the oldest of six children. Her paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Hobbs Turner, was a member of the United States Marine Corps in 1944 during World War II. Turner spent the first eleven years of her life as part of the Lyman Family, raised in various communes around the U.S. with over 100 members who were devotees of Mel Lyman and who believed they would eventually live on Venus. Though Turner acknowledged that the Lyman Family had been portrayed as a cult she argued against using the word to describe them. In accordance with the customs of the Lyman Family, Turner was not raised by her mother, but she and her younger sister were eventually ejected from the Family after their mother chose to leave. Turner considered rejoining the group when she was 18, but eventually chose to attend college instead in part because of the deeply misogynistic and sexist attitudes of the group.
Career
Turner and I Shot Andy Warhol director Mary Harron wrote a screenplay, which ended up being selected for the film version of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. She has a brief cameo in the film, in which she delivers the in-joke, "I'm not a lesbian!". There is also a line about attending Sarah Lawrence College, Turner's real-life alma mater. Turner emerged on the scene with the film Go Fish, which she co-wrote and co-produced with her then-girlfriend, Rose Troche. Turner also starred in the film, portraying a young woman named Max whose friends help her find a new girlfriend, Ely, portrayed by VS Brodie. Director Kevin Smith was a fan of the movie, particularly a scene in it wherein, in an imagined sequence, some of a character's friends chastise her for "selling out" and sleeping with a man, and used it as an inspiration for his own take on a similar theme in his own film Chasing Amy. Turner has cameos in both Chasing Amy and Smith's later film Dogma. Smith also named Joey Lauren Adams' character in Smith's Mallrats after Turner. A writer and story editor for the first two seasons of The L Word, Turner also made several guest appearances on the show as Alice Pieszecki's screenwriter ex-girlfriend, Gabby. In 2005, Turner wrote the script for BloodRayne. It was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay in 2006. In the documentary Tales from the Script, she stated in an interview that director Uwe Boll only used about 25% of her screenplay. In 2005, she co-wrote the script for The NotoriousBettie Page with Mary Harron, who directed the film. Turner's first foray into web television is the 2008 online drama series, FEED, directed by Mel Robertston, launched on AfterEllen.com. In 2014 she appeared alongside Nayo Wallace, Candis Cayne and Cathy DeBuono in Jane Clark's horror comedy filmCrazy Bitches. Turner has directed several short films, such as The Hummer and Hung, which have appeared in many international film festivals.
