Kathleen Turner says she pretended to be an alcoholic to hide the fact she had rheumatoid arthritis.

She feared she would be unable to find work if she had arthritis because of Hollywood's obsession with youth. The 51-year-old, who is moving to Italy, blasted the attitude of American directors who she accuses of only employing actress below a certain age.

"I was afraid I wouldn't get work," she told the New York Daily News. "My hands were very crippled for a while, so I kept dropping glasses and things because I couldn't grip them. "Some of the medications make you blow up and puffy, so the rumor was that I had a drinking problem. "It was safer for me to let people think I was drinking than to tell them that I had this.

"They always hire drunks, all the time. But they wouldn't hire someone with a disease they didn't understand."

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