When you think of Hollywood leading ladies you’ll be hard pressed to find one with a more diverse career than Kathleen Turner. She’s been on the silver screen for more than 30 years, starring in a roster of high-profile films, from “Prizzi’s Honor” to “The Accidental Tourist,” and “Peggy Sue Got Married”, which garnered Turner an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

Turner has a real-life role as the National Chair of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Board of Advocates that will bring her to Naples next week. She’s extremely passionate about the group, and she’s addressing its annual luncheon Jan. 22 to talk about that passion. (For information, see accompanying box.)

Back in California, Turner is on the Showtime series “Californication,” a no-holds-barred “dramedy” about a down-and-out writer played by David Duchovny. Turner plays Sue Collini, a fiery talent agent who has no qualms about speaking her mind about sex, drugs and everything in between.

“I had a ball playing Sue Collini!” Turner says of her role.

And it shows in her performance. It’s the type of role many would shy away from due to the raunchy subject matter, and Turner agrees.

“I had a woman come up to me the other day,” she said, “and tell me, ‘I love what you’re doing on the show!’ and I wanted to blush.”

Sue Collini isn’t Kathleen Turner, she emphasized with a chuckle: “Not my style, baby. I’m an old-fashioned woman.”

Turner hasn’t only played over-the-top types. She recalls the toughest role she ever had to play, that of Mrs. Lisbon for the 1999 drama, “The Virgin Suicides.” In it, she is an overprotective mother to five daughters, one of whom attempts suicide in the beginning of the film.

Turner’s own daughter was roughly the same age of her character’s daughter at the time, which made it more difficult to do her scenes: “It was like a knife in my stomach every day.”

While roles like Sue Collini and Mrs. Lisbon would seem to be high-profile roles any actor would want to sink their teeth into, that’s not what drew Turner to them.

“What appeals to me is contrast,” she says. Turner enjoys having the ability to explore different characters, to question why they say and do the things they do, from the rancorous wife in “War of the Roses,” which won her a Golden Globe nomination, to the voice behind Jessica in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

Turner can soon be seen on the stage in Philadelphia in a one-woman play about feisty newspaper columnist and best-selling author Molly Ivins, entitled “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.”

Turner knew the late Texas-based political columnist personally

“I’ve never done anyone I actually knew before,” she admits. “I found it extremely hard. But I’ve got more understanding of it now and will be all right.”

Will she return to the new season of “Californication” later this year?

“I’m not sure yet, honestly. I like to see some of the scripts before I greet things,” Turner says.

Turner is serious about all her roles, and that includes her role with Planned Parenthood. She’s been the national chair for the organization since 1995, but considers herself to have been involved with them since she was 19 years old and first visited a Planned Parenthood office herself.

“There is no women’s health care service in this country of the same standards accessible to women without insurance,” she says of Planned Parenthood

Anti-abortion activist has targeted the group, but Turner says that only drives her harder to promote it and to explain what it does: “Planned Parenthood is about planning, not about becoming a parent or being a parent.”

Educating people about sexual reproductive help, and the options they have should they become pregnant, is what Turner says she’s trying to accomplish by working with the group.

Be it on the screen or in real life, Kathleen Turner loves what she does. The secret to maintaining a level head through it all, she says, is to simply have fun: “That’s the point!”

Thanks Naples News.