Rock icon Tina Turner was the first star to speak publicly about spousal violence. The famous 1981 interview made her a pioneer of self-empowerment in show business.
In the winter of 1981, Tina Turner did something outrageous. She gave an interview to the magazine “People” and spoke about what women hadn’t talked about before, not at home and certainly not in public: abuse in marriage, violence, humiliation. Turner was 42 at the time, a mother of four, a star who rose to fame with her husband Ike Turner. Ike and Tina were a unit for a long time. A guarantee of success for millions of sold records and hits on the assembly line. But away from the spotlight, Tina Turner’s life looked different. “It was torture. I lived a life of death”.