Five minutes with Guinevere Turner

Lesbian Actress/Writer/Director

Guinevere Turner is one of the most recognizable faces in lesbian cinema. She was producer, as well as star, of the classic lesbian film Go Fish. She's appeared in The L Word as Alice's ex-girlfriend and has written numerous screenplays, including Blood Rayne, The Notorious Bettie Page and American Psycho. I had five minutes to chat with Guinevere Turner before the start of her latest film, Itty Bitty Titty Committee.

Lesbian Life: It seems like every time I see a lesbian short film, you’re in it. It’s almost become a game, “When is Guinevere going to show up?” Why is that?

Guinevere Turner: In L.A. we have a real community of all helping each other out on our films. It’s the only way I can help out. I’m not a set designer, so short of writing it or directing it, I have to act in it. I also have a hard time saying no, because I like to act and I don’t get to do it nearly as often as I would like to. I’m always happy to.

Plus you don’t have to be responsible for content. It’s so much easier than writing. It flexes a totally different set of muscles. Plus it’s fun. I love being on sets. In Outfest I’m in five things. Two of them are documentaries. Somebody said, “What is this, the fucking Guinevere Turner festival?” I didn’t even feel like I was that busy this year, but I guess I’ve just been gaying it up!

Were you working on a documentary? I saw you filming something a few years ago at Dinah Shore.

Yes, I was in it. That is at Outfest. It’s called A Lez in Wonderland. They interview me a lot. They frame the whole documentary with (my drunken, by the way) ramblings about Dinah Shore. That’s a really funny, really wacky documentary. The director is hilarious, a Cuban woman from France. It’s a real straight up documentary and then there’s her in mime makeup in the desert. Somehow it all makes sense, but it’s crazy.

What’s happening with your Bettie Page film?

It’s out on DVD. It came, it went to theaters. It admittedly had a not so flashy theatrical run, but it’s doing really well on DVD. The movie is great, I love it. It took us like eight years to make the movie. I didn’t get to play her, but Gretchen Mol does a great job. I just got too old to play [Bettie Page]. In the movie she goes from 19 to 32 and I was 35 when we were filming. I know I look young for my age, but not 19.

What are you working on right now?

I am working on a TV show for the Oxygen network that’s about stalkers. It’s a series about stalkers.

And what are you doing?

Writing and secretly creating a character for myself, but they don’t know that yet. It’s a procedural kind of show, like CSI, but with stalking cases with a central female figure that is based on a real person who is a specialist in stalking cases. It’s so interesting. I’m learning so much about how the law works and it’s crazy what people do.

And I’m also producing with Here TV on a lesbian erotica series.

Is it on now?

No, they have a reality show that’s on now about lesbian sex that’s on, but this is going to be narrative. We just started last week. I am also making a couple more shorts.

And I am really wanting to make another lesbian feature. I’ve been trying to get Rose Troche and I together so we can make Go Fish 2. It’s semi-developed. We both live in different cities and we’re both super busy, but we’re going to try really hard to force ourselves into a room to get that happening.