Guinevere Turner
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Guinevere Jane Turner (born May 23, 1968) is an American actress, screenwriter, and film director. She wrote the films American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page and played the lead role of the dominatrix Tanya Cheex in Preaching to the Perverted. She was a story editor and played recurring character Gabby Deveaux on Showtime's The L Word.
Early life
Turner was born in Boston, and is the oldest of six children. Her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Hobbs Turner, was a member of the United States Marine Corps in 1944 during World War II.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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. 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Turner considered rejoining the group when she was 18, but eventually chose to attend college.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Career
Turner co-wrote and co-produced her first film, 1994's Go Fish, with her then-girlfriend, director Rose Troche.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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. Another early film appearance was in Cheryl Dunye's 1996 independent film The Watermelon Woman.Template:Citation neededTemplate:Tone inline
Turner and I Shot Andy Warhol director Mary Harron wrote the screenplay for the film version of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, which Harron directed. Turner has a small role in the film, in which she delivers the in-joke, "I'm not a lesbian!".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2005, she co-wrote the script for The Notorious Bettie Page with Mary Harron, who directed the film. Turner and Harron collaborated again as screenwriter and director, respectively, on the 2018 film Charlie Says.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Turner's first foray into web television was the 2008 online drama series, FEED, directed by Mel Robertson, launched on AfterEllen.com.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2014, she appeared alongside Nayo Wallace, Candis Cayne and Cathy DeBuono in Jane Clark's horror comedy film Crazy Bitches.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Turner has directed several short films, such as Hummer and Hung, which have appeared in many international film festivals.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2019, The New Yorker published an essay by Turner entitled "My Childhood in a Cult," about growing up in the Lyman Family.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Four years later, Turner published a memoir, When the World Didn't End, expanding greatly on the story of her youth, and continuing on to her adolescence in an abusive household.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Kirkus Reviews called the book "a moving portrait of a bizarre childhood written with emotional nuance and bittersweet deliverance ... The author’s prose is reflective, vivid, and confessional, a rich combination full of striking imagery."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Personal life
Turner is a lesbian.<ref name=Warn>Template:Cite web</ref> She lives in New York and Los Angeles.
Filmography
Film
- 1994: Go Fish (writer, actress)
- 1996: The Watermelon Woman (actress)
- 1997: Chasing Amy (actress)
- 1997: Latin Boys Go to Hell (actress)
- 1997: Preaching to the Perverted (actress)
- 1998: Dante's View (actress)
- 1999: Dogma (actress)
- 2000: American Psycho (writer, actress)
- 2001: The Fluffer (actress)
- 2001: Spare Me (short film, writer-director)
- 2002: Pipe Dream (actress)
- 2002: Stray Dogs (actress)
- 2004: Hummer (Short film, writer-director-actress)<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
- 2005: Dani and Alice (actress)
- 2005: BloodRayne (writer)
- 2005: Hung (short film, writer-director-actress)
- 2005: The Notorious Bettie Page (writer)
- 2005: Beyond Lovely (short film, actress)
- 2006: A Lez in Wonderland (Broute-minou à Palm Springs) (short film, actress)
- 2007: Itty Bitty Titty Committee (actress)
- 2008: Late (short film, writer-director)
- 2008: Little Mutinies (short film, actress)
- 2008: Quiet Please (short film, director)
- 2008: She Likes Girls 3 (video, director)
- 2010: The Owls (short film, actress)
- 2012: Breaking the Girls (writer)
- 2013: Who's Afraid of Vagina Wolf? (actress)
- 2014: Crazy Bitches (actress)
- 2016: Superpowerless (actress)
- 2017: Post-Apocalyptic Potluck (short film, writer-director)
- 2018: Charlie Says (writer)
- 2020: I Am Fear (actress)
- 2022: Candy Land (actress)
- 2024: Saint Clare (writer)
Television
- 2004–2005: The L Word (TV series, writer)
- 2016: Sugar (web series, director, episode: Chapter 5)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
See also
- List of female film and television directors
- List of lesbian filmmakers
- List of LGBT-related films directed by women
References
Further reading
External links
- Pages with broken file links
- Living people
- American film actresses
- American television actresses
- American television writers
- American women film directors
- American lesbian actresses
- American lesbian artists
- American lesbian writers
- American LGBTQ film directors
- American LGBTQ screenwriters
- American women television writers
- LGBTQ people from Massachusetts
- Screenwriters from Massachusetts
- Actresses from Boston
- Writers from Boston
- Sarah Lawrence College alumni
- MacDowell Colony fellows
- Lambda Literary Award for Drama winners
- 21st-century American women writers
- 1968 births
- Syracuse University faculty