
Still, people liked it and they remembered it. “I look back at Acid Queen now and I sort of flinch when I see how horrible it was. Something that I would enjoy and be proud of,” she explained. I wanted to do something that people would remember me for. I didn’t want to just be on the screen just for the sake of being up there. No madwoman, no machines, nothing but just straight hooker. But in the earlier ’60s and ’70s, there were no parts for women, for Black women.”Īnd even when the scripts started coming in, she said she was repeatedly offered roles as a “hooker.” “Today there are because the movies…you just need to be a good actress. “There were no parts for Black women,” she told the interviewer. Instead, Turner said that despite “always” wanting to act since she was a child, “no one asked” her then or before Tommy. I want to drive the machines, to do the fighting. “It is the warrior woman parts that I want. “She was a warrior woman first,” said Turner, adding that she was looking for roles as a woman like those in Terminator and Alien. She would go on next to star in George Miller’s Mad Max sequel, Beyond Thunderdome, a role she loved because it let her be physical. Turner, who said Russell initially had reservations about her before seeing her perform, said she was so excited to do the role, which required about a week’s worth of filming. “Then I said, ‘Oh, well, but this is acting,’ because when you’re acting, you’re just portraying the lives of anything or anyone.” “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 said, laughing. Still, she said, it was her “first feeling of representing something else and taking the load even.” But when she took it, she didn’t know she would be playing a character who uses sex work to lure her victims. Turner said she and David Bowie were ultimately up for the part, with it going to her. Turner also turned down other parts in Hollywood after her memorable role as The Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s 1975 film Tommy. “I think Steve understood that I couldn’t do it for that reason, finally, after I really expressed what it was.” 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’m trying to forget the past because it’s done. “I mean, I’m talking always to the press about my life and now to do a movie? I’m just dragging myself down.

In a resurfaced 1986 interview with Luce Cinecitta, Turner speaks about why she turned down the role, telling interviewer and Italian television host Serena Dandini that it reflected “too much back on my life with my ex-husband” (Ike Turner).

Beyoncé Honors Tina Turner During Concert in Paris: "Blessed That I Was Allowed to Witness Her Brilliance"
