Geraldine Turner’s new autobiography Turner’s Turn is described as “a disarmingly honest memoir” – and it certainly is that. 

What’s more, she has plenty to be candid about, but she traces her experience growing up in a decidedly dysfunctional family, and her career as one of the stars of Australian musical theatre, with such frankness, humour, warmth and heart that she has written a real page-turner.

Geraldine Turner

Geraldine-Turner. Photo © Kurt Sneddon.

Turner was the youngest and only daughter of five children, born into a working class Brisbane family. Her father was a truck driver, who was a kindly man when sober but prone to outbursts of violence when drunk. Her overbearing, erratic, somewhat unhinged mother was a frustrated performer, and tried to live her life through her daughter, but never seemed satisfied, no matter what Turner achieved.

There was often tension between her brothers, one of whom was jailed for the manslaughter of his three-year-old niece when drunk, while Turner herself was raped when she was 17 – something she has never revealed until now.

Turner first came to prominence in 1974 when she played Petra in...