Janine Turner Talks Show Business, God
"Nothing could drive you to your knees like show business, at least in my life," said critically acclaimed actress Janine Turner.
"One rejection after another rejection. ... What was to keep me from going off the deep end, from feeling insecure and feeling less than?"
The 47-year-old Texas native, who starred in the TV drama "Northern Exposure," recalled her difficult journey as an actress and her relationship with God in a video testimony featured on iamsecond.com.
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"Thousands of auditions. Thousands and thousands of no's. 'You're not tall enough.' 'You're not smart enough, thin enough, fat enough,'" she remembers hearing. "Whatever it was, it was always something."
As she dealt with what she calls her "10,000 no's," Turner began drinking alcohol.
"The interesting thing about alcohol is the devil likes it a lot," she said. "'Now all of a sudden, I can entice, I can tempt, I can do whatever I want when this person's drinking all this alcohol.'"
At that time, she became engaged to actor Alec Baldwin. The engagement was later called off and Turner began to realize her sickness as a blackout drinker.
"What I believe is that though the devil was trying to get me down, God wouldn't let him," she said.
At 23 years of age, Turner became sober.
She calls it a miracle.
Turner was baptized as a child, she noted and she "went to the dark side" for a while but "God didn't give up on me," she said.
"I'm so grateful by what Jesus did because for what he did I can keep going and I can believe in the promise of the hope and the everlasting life and that Jesus will not forsake us."
Still a struggling actress, Turner fell into another "deep black hole" as she continued to face rejection at numerous auditions. It wasn't until she was 27 that she landed a role in CBS' "Northern Exposure."
She starred as Maggie O'Connell for six years and earned three Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a dramatic series.
"When I look back at all the journeys that I've been through in my life, I realize that so often I just saw the threads and I could just see this and I never saw the blanket. God sees the whole tapestry. God sees eternity in perspective. God sees my whole life in perspective."
"My name is Janine Turner and I am second."
Launched in 2008 by e3 Partners, iamsecond.com features the testimonies of celebrities such as Brian "Head" Welch – former guitarist for Korn – and actor Stephen Baldwin along with everyday people. They largely share about their struggles and how Christ has impacted their lives.
