Guinevere Turner facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Guinevere Turner
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Turner in 2019
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Guinevere Jane Turner
May 23, 1968 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Alma mater | Sarah Lawrence College |
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| Years active | 1994–present |
Guinevere Jane Turner (born May 23, 1968) is an American actress, screenwriter, and film director. She is known for writing the screenplays for popular movies like American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page. She also worked as a writer and appeared as the character Gabby Deveaux on the Showtime series The L Word.
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Early Life and Education
Guinevere Turner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and is the oldest of six children. Her grandmother on her mother's side, Elizabeth Hobbs Turner, served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II in 1944.
For the first eleven years of her life, Turner lived with a large group called the Lyman Family. This community had over 100 members living in different communes across the United States. In this group, children were not raised directly by their parents. After her mother decided to leave the community, Turner and her younger sister also had to leave.
When she was 18, she thought about rejoining the group but decided to go to college instead. She attended Sarah Lawrence College.
Career in Film and Television
First Films
Turner's career began in 1994 with the film Go Fish. She co-wrote, co-produced, and starred in the movie with director Rose Troche. In the film, Turner played Max, a young woman whose friends try to help her find a new girlfriend.
The director Kevin Smith liked Go Fish so much that it inspired a scene in his own movie, Chasing Amy. Turner made brief appearances, known as cameos, in Chasing Amy and another of Smith's films, Dogma. Smith also named a character in his movie Mallrats after her.
Writing and Acting Success
Turner worked with director Mary Harron to write the screenplay for the film American Psycho, which was based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis. Harron directed the movie, and Turner also had a small acting role in it.
She was a writer for the first two seasons of the TV show The L Word. She also appeared on the show several times as Gabby, the ex-girlfriend of the main character, Alice Pieszecki.
In 2005, Turner wrote the script for the movie BloodRayne. In an interview, she said that the director, Uwe Boll, used only about a quarter of what she wrote. That same year, she worked with Mary Harron again to write the script for The Notorious Bettie Page. The two teamed up again for the 2018 film Charlie Says, with Turner as the writer and Harron as the director.
Turner has also directed several short films, including Hummer and Hung, which have been shown at film festivals around the world.
Writing a Memoir
In 2019, The New Yorker magazine published an essay by Turner called "My Childhood in a Cult," where she wrote about growing up in the Lyman Family.
In 2023, she released a memoir titled When the World Didn't End. The book tells the story of her unusual childhood in more detail. Kirkus Reviews praised the book, calling it "a moving portrait of a bizarre childhood written with emotional nuance and bittersweet deliverance."
Personal life
Turner is a lesbian. She divides her time between living in New York and Los Angeles.
Selected Filmography
This list includes some of Turner's work as an actress, writer, or director.
Film
- 1994: Go Fish (writer, actress)
- 1996: The Watermelon Woman (actress)
- 1997: Chasing Amy (actress)
- 1998: Dante's View (actress)
- 1999: Dogma (actress)
- 2000: American Psycho (writer, actress)
- 2002: Pipe Dream (actress)
- 2005: BloodRayne (writer)
- 2005: The Notorious Bettie Page (writer)
- 2007: Itty Bitty Titty Committee (actress)
- 2012: Breaking the Girls (writer)
- 2016: Superpowerless (actress)
- 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, actress)
- 2016: Sugar (web series, director)
See also
- List of female film and television directors
- List of lesbian filmmakers
- List of LGBT-related films directed by women
