Janine Turner Biography and Photos

Janine Turner (born Janine Loraine Gauntt on December 6, 1962) is an American actress, known for her starring role on General Hospital from 1982 to 1983 and the prime time television show Northern Exposure from 1990 to 1995. She is also known for her role as Dr. Dana Stowe on the 2000-2002 Lifetime original series, Strong Medicine.

Turner was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S., to Janice, a real estate agent, and Turner M. Gauntt, a pilot who attended West Point and flew for Braniff for 30 years. Her father is from East Texas and her mother is from South Texas. She has a brother, Tim, and was raised in Euless, Texas. At the age of fifteen, she left home to pursue a modeling career with the Wilhelmina Modeling Agency.

Turner began her acting career in 1980, at the age of 18, in an episode of Dallas. She continued to make guest appearances on popular television shows throughout the 1980s until landing the important role of Maggie O’Connell on Northern Exposure in 1990.

She appeared in the music video “Ricochet” by David Bowie. After her breakthrough in Northern Exposure, she appeared in the big budget action film Cliffhanger starring Sylvester Stallone. In 2004, she wrote and directed Trip in a Summer Dress, a film about a strong-willed mother and her children. She has worked with actor and director Mike Norris in a number of recent projects. In 2006, she appeared in a low budget film filmed in Dallas, The Night of the White Pants.

An attractive leading player of the small screen, Janine Turner won fans and fame as the intelligent, down-to-earth, but unlucky in love Alaskan pilot Maggie O’Connell in the quirky CBS comedy-drama “Northern Exposure” (CBS, 1990-95).

Although born in the heartland, Turner was raised in Texas where she began to compete in beauty pageants as a child. By age 15, she had moved to NYC to pursue a modeling career and within a year was under contract with the Wilhelmina agency as one of its youngest ever models. Then a pert brunette with long luxurious hair, Turner moved from posing to acting with a three-episode stint as a friend to Lucy Ewing (Charlene Tilton) on the popular CBS primetime soap “Dallas” in 1980. That experience led to her casting as a soap actress on the late night backstage melodrama “Behind the Scenes” (CBS, 1981-82). In a case of art imitating life, Turner soon found herself acting in a daytime serial, With her hair dyed blonde, she moved to ABC as Laura Templeton, a doppelganger for departed star Genie Francis, on “General Hospital”.

After leaving the soap, Turner floundered for much of the 1980s, making occasional guest appearances, generally of the damsel in distress variety, on shows like “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” and “Knight Rider”. Features also provided little opportunities, as Turner was relegated to cameos (as in her debut, “Young Doctors in Love” 1972) or supporting roles in big screen bombs (like “Tai-Pan” 1986). the actress regrouped and returned to NYC where she studied acting and honed her skills in Off-Broadway plays. Perhaps her best-recognized role of this period was a tiny part as a spoiled Southern belle in “Steel Magnolias” (1989).

Although stardom seemed elusive, all that changed in 1990 with “Northern Exposure”. Her hair now returned to its natural brunette and closely cropped, Turner cut a dashing figure as the tomboyish, insecure but strong-willed flyer. Her onscreen chemistry with Rob Morrow (as the New York Jewish doctor forced to work in what he considers the hinterlands) helped propel the series to success and each to 1993 Emmy nominations. With her newfound status, Turner attempted to establish herself as a leading lady in features with “Cliffhanger” (1993), but the special effects and her male co-stars Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow overshadowed her. After “Northern Exposure” left the air, Turner filmed a busted sitcom pilot and bided her time. In 1997, she was cast as a frontierswoman who falls in love with the Native American who kidnaps her in the CBS drama “Stolen Women: Captured Hearts” and returned to the big screen paying homage to the moms of the 1950s as June Cleaver in the big screen version of “Leave It to Beaver”.

Following time off for motherhood, Turner kept active in a string of TV-movies like “Circle of Deceit” (ABC, 1998, which she also co-produced), “Beauty” (CBS, 1998), a contemporary spin on “Beauty and the Beast” and “Barbara Taylor Bradford’s ‘A Secret Affair’” (CBS, 1999). The actress returned to series TV playing a headstrong surgeon forced to work with a female doctor at a free clinic in “Strong Medicine” (Lifetime, 2000).

In 1983, she became engaged to Alec Baldwin, but the two never made it to the altar. She lives on a ranch outside of Dallas, Texas, with her daughter Juliette (born November 22, 1997).