Why Tina Turner rejected role in Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Color Purple’
In a newly resurfaced interview with Luce Cinetta, the late Tina Turner discussed her foray into the film industry and revealed why she turned down the chance to star in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 movie The Colour Purple.
The star, who died on May 24th aged 83, told Italian host Serena Dandini that the movie reflected “too much back on my life with my ex-husband,” Ike Turner. “I mean, I’m talking always to the press about my life and now to do a movie? I’m just dragging myself down,” she added.
Tragically, Turner endured abuse during her 16-year marriage to Ike. “I’m trying to forget the past because it’s done,” she continued. “It’s over. I finished that part of my life, and I’m not going to do a part that will remind me of what I’ve lived already,” she said at the time. “I think Steve understood that I couldn’t do it for that reason, finally, after I really expressed what it was.”
Turner famously starred in Ken Russel’s 1975 movie Tommy, based on The Who’s rock opera. She was selected for the role over fellow auditioner David Bowie; however, at the time, she didn’t realise her character would use sex work to lure her male victims in. She admitted that the role was her “first feeling of representing something else and taking the load even”.
“I took the part because I got the chance to be this mad woman and doing all these things, and when they gave me the needle, I went, ‘Oh, I’m promoting drugs!'” she added, laughing. “Then I said, ‘Oh, well, but this is acting,’ because when you’re acting, you’re just portraying the lives of anything or anyone.”
The “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” would also star in George Miller’s Mad Max sequel, Beyond Thunderdome, a role of which she was particularly fond. “She was a warrior woman first,” Turner told Dandini. “It is the warrior woman parts that I want. I want physical parts. I want to drive the machines, to do the fighting. I want to be physical. I still need that excitement.”
Watch Tina Turner in Beyond Thunderdome below.
