Humor has been the balm of my life, but it’s been reserved for those close to me, not part of the public Lana.

Turner contrasts her private self with the carefully managed “public Lana” created by Hollywood’s studio system and gossip culture. The line suggests that humor—often a coping mechanism amid pressure, scandal, and scrutiny—was something she protected, sharing it only within trusted relationships. Implicitly, she frames her public image as a role requiring control and restraint, while her real emotional life included warmth and levity that audiences rarely saw. The quote also comments on celebrity as performance: the traits that sustain a person (here, humor as “balm”) may be deliberately hidden to preserve a marketable persona or to keep a boundary between self and spectacle.