Who Did Tina Turner Play In Arnold Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero?
Tina Turner is gone, having died today at the age of 83. And with that, a massive hole has been left in our culture — one that never can really be filled again. Turner's impact was most notable in music, of course, but was also present in film, going all the way back to her appearance as the Acid Queen in the 1975 film, "Tommy." However, fans likely remember her best for her scenery-chewing performance as Aunty Entity in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" or for her brief cameo as the mayor of Los Angeles opposite future California governor — and undisputed action star — Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That last one might send readers wracking for when exactly they might have seen the Queen of Rock & Roll playing a mayor. The movie in which she played that role isn't exactly the first we think of in Schwarzenegger's filmography. "Last Action Hero" was gratingly self-aware for its time. Released in 1993 — the same year, incidentally, as the release of Turner's biopic, "What's Love Got to Do with It" — it's very much a send-up of the kinds of action movies that dominated movie theaters in that era.
While the film doesn't quite work, it does make for a fun nostalgic watch, which is one of the reasons "Last Action Hero" has become something of a cult classic. And Turner's brief appearance as L.A.'s mayor is part of that fun.
Tina Turner was one of many celebrity cameos in Last Action Hero
"Last Action Hero" is full of not-so-subtle nods and winks intended to remind the audience at every turn that they are, in fact, watching a movie that straddles the gap between action and comedy in an outrageous way. The most obvious, of course, is having Arnold Schwarzenegger play a character — Detective Jack Slater — who discovers that he's nothing more than a character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Jack Slater film series.
Toward that same end is the absurd number of celebrity cameos in the film. Among them is Tina Turner, who, at the film's very beginning, tries for a few brief seconds to stop Slater from entering a building to rescue his son. We know she's the L.A. mayor because she briefly mentions it, right as Slater walks past her and slugs the Lieutenant Governor in the face.
This, however, is only the beginning. The trope really goes off the rails when we notice Sharon Stone appear in the guise of her character from "Basic Instinct," or Robert Patrick showing up as the T-1000 in a decidedly non-Terminator franchise. There's even an anthropomorphic cartoon cat named Whiskers working as a detective at Jack's police precinct. Turner's cameo is certainly not on this level, but it does serve to remind us that we are, essentially, watching a big-budget action movie about a big-budget action movie.