Remember That Time Tina Turner Played LA's Mayor In Last Action Hero's Jack Slater Movies?
Tina Turner was, by all accounts, simply the best. Not just as a musician, where she released unforgettable hits like "Proud Mary" and "What's Love Got to Do With It?", but also as an actor. You probably remember her scene-stealing, villainous turn in the classic post-apocalyptic action thriller "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," where she played a woman trying to reboot the world by bringing barbaric capitalism and grotesque industry back to the wastelands.
Auntie Entity was certainly Turner's most memorable role and even won her an NAACP Image Award for Best Actress, but the singing sensation did have an acting career beyond "Thunderdome." You can find her in musical classics like "Tommy" and musical not-so-classics like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," two films that emphasized her titanic celebrity as a musician. She was also the subject of the Oscar-nominated biopic "What's Love Got to Do With It," which earned Angela Bassett her first Academy Award nomination for playing, you guessed it, Tina Turner.
But there was one other film where Tina Turner got to do some actual acting, not just contributing to the soundtrack, and not playing herself. Indeed, she played no less than the Mayor of Los Angeles, opposite an actor who was — at the time — the biggest movie star on the planet.
And that film was "Last Action Hero."
I guess we DID need another hero
"Last Action Hero" was expected to be one of the biggest blockbusters of 1993. The meta-humor movie is about an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan who gets transported into one of the actor's over-the-top movies and then pulls Schwarzenegger's fictional protagonist back into the real world with him, and had as epic a pedigree as any movie ever. It was directed by John McTiernan, who previously directed "Predator" and "Die Hard." It was written by Shane Black, who previously wrote "Lethal Weapon" and "The Last Boy Scout." And it was Schwarzenegger's first film after the gigantic mega-hit "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (unless you count his directorial debut, a Made-For-TV remake of the holiday rom-com classic "Christmas in Connecticut," and yes that is a real thing).
But "Last Action Hero" was also an unexpected flop, thanks in no small part to poor timing — It came out just one week after "Jurassic Park," a death sentence for practically any movie — but also to mixed reactions from critics and audiences who weren't quite ready for multiverse blockbusters yet.
Still, nobody could say they didn't at least try to make "Last Action Hero" into a big, big movie. The film practically bursts at the seams with wild ideas and gags, with cameos from practically everybody they could drag onto the set. In addition to on-screen appearances from Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, MC Hammer, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Joan Plowright, and Little Richard, to name a few, Danny DeVito also provides the voice of a smart-alecky cartoon cat.
And that incredible series of cameos got kicked off by Tina Turner.
Simply, the best cameo
"Last Action Hero" begins at the end of another, different movie, with fictional LAPD detective Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Jack Slater) pushing his way past a police barricade to confront his new arch-nemesis, a serial killer named Ripper (Tom Noonan playing Tom Noonan, playing Ripper). Ripper has kidnapped a whole bunch of children, including Jack's son, and nothing can stop Jack from exacting his vengeance.
Not his commanding officer, that's for sure. And when he fails, Tina Turner suddenly scampers in from off-camera yelling that she's "the mayor of this great metropolis," and that she's got a long history of "tiffs" with Jack Slater, and also that she's brought the Lieutenant Governor with her. Then Jack punches the crap out of the Lieutenant Governor and tells Tina Turner, "When the governor gets here, call me."
Tina Turner then watches Jack go and kick another cop in the testes for having the audacity to think he could stop Jack Slater from interfering with a hostage crisis, and then we kinda never see her again. She's there to run into frame, announce that she's the mayor, introduce somebody who's about to get punched, watch them get punched, and then look at Schwarzenegger all like, "Damn, that guy's a badass."
It's a small role but it's the first thing in "Last Action Hero" that truly sets up the film's comic, winking tone, and it's all on Tina Turner to sell it. And she does, and she's great.
Better yet, after all that macho posturing, Tina Turner got the last laugh. The biopic based on her life, "What's Love Got To Do With It," came out just one week after "Last Action Hero," to widespread critical acclaim and multiple Oscar nominations. Tina Turner's soundtrack went platinum and the film's lead, Angela Bassett, got a huge career boost.
Take that, Jack.