What the Hell Happened to Kelly McGillis?

After a string of hits in the mid-eighties, Kelly McGillis was a rising star.  Her career took off quickly reaching its peak with one of the most iconic movies of the entire decade.  Top Gun made Tom Cruise a mega-star.  But McGillis’ career went in a different direction.  A few years after her star-making role, McGillis became dissatisfied with Hollywood.  While she has continued working steadily for the last several decades, Kelly McGillis has largely avoided the spotlight.

What the hell happened?

McGillis studied acting at Julliard in the early eighties.  During that time, something happened that changed her life forever.  In February 1982, two teenagers broke into McGillis’ apartment and raped her and her girlfriend.  The attack was brutal, but because the assailants were under-age they could not be tried as adults.

McGillis has said that she felt like the attack was a punishment for having taken a same-sex lover.  She had recently been through a short marriage to a fellow student which ended in a messy divorce.  McGillis’ lesbian relationship had been a closely guarded secret.  She took the attack as a sign that it was wrong.  Afterwards, she began self-medicating with alcohol:

I drank a lot. I couldn’t eat. I twitched incessantly and I had nightmares. Because I was so afraid to go to sleep at night, I would drink.

Success Came Fast

Kelly McGillis - Reuben, Reuben - 1983
Kelly McGillis – Reuben, Reuben – 1983

Shortly after graduating from Juilliard, McGillis made her movie debut in the comedy-drama, Reuben, Reuben.

Tom Conti starred as a Scottish poet going through a protracted bout of writer’s block.  At the start of the movie, he is a drunk who leeches off of wealthy patrons while trying to seduce their wives.  But he decides to get his act together when he falls for a college student played by McGillis.

Critics were kind to Reuben, Reuben.  Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that McGillis was “a find.”  The movie was nominated for two Oscars; Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.  Not bad for McGillis’ first outing.

The following year, McGillis starred in the TV movie, Sweet Revenge.  She played the wife of an Army Major (a then-unknown Alec Baldwin) who recognized her husband’s commanding officer as the man responsible for her brother’s death.

Kelly McGillis - Witness - 1985
Kelly McGillis – Witness – 1985

Two years after her movie debut, McGillis got her big break in Peter Weir’s dramatic thriller, Witness.  Harrison Ford starred as a police officer who goes undercover in Amish country to protect a young boy (Lukas Haas) who is the sole witness to a murder.  McGillis portrayed the boy’s mother who has been recently widowed.  Danny Glover and Viggo Mortensen costarred.

The script for Witness, originally titled, Called Home, was inspired by an episode of the TV show Gunsmoke.  It was over 180-pages long and devoted a lot of screen time to Amish traditions.  The script told the story from the point of view of the young widow instead of the under-cover cop.  Producer Edward S. Feldman thought the script had potential, so he offered the screenwriters $25,000 for an option and a rewrite.  Six weeks later, William Kelley and Earl W. Wallace, who also wrote the episode of Gunsmoke the movie was inspired by, handed in their revised screenplay.

In preparation for their roles, Ford accompanied the Philadelphia Police Department on several raids while McGillis lived with an actual Amish widow and her seven children.  She observed life in an Amish community and tried to learn the speech patterns.

Witness was well-liked by most critics, but not unanimously so.  It opened in second-place at the box office behind Beverly Hills Cop.  It continued to trail the popular action-comedy for four weeks.  In its fifth week in theaters, Witness finally claimed the number one spot.  Of course by that point, Beverly Hills Cop had spent an impressive thirteen weeks at the top of the box office.  After one week at the top, the two movies flip-flopped with Beverly Hills Cop once again reclaiming the #1 spot.

The movie was a dark horse candidate during award season.  Witness received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Ford.  McGillis wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, but she did receive a nod for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes.  She lost the Globe to Meg Tilly who was nominated for Agnes of God.

Highway to the Danger Zone

Kelly McGillis - Top Gun - 1986
Kelly McGillis – Top Gun – 1986

With Witness, McGillis captured the attention of Hollywood.  But the following year, Top Gun made her a household name.

Tom Cruise starred as a maverick Naval Aviator in training.  McGillis played an instructor with a thing for cocksure bad boys.  Anthony Edwards played Cruise’s best friend and Val Kilmer costarred as his rival.  A pre-fame Meg Ryan had a supporting role as Edwards’ soon-to-be-widow.

Top Gun was inspired by an article that ran in California magazine.  The article included aerial photography which sparked the imaginations of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.  They hired screenwriters Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. to adapt the article about the lives of the pilots at “Fightertown USA” into a script.  The Navy insisted on making several changes to the original script in order to secure their involvement.  For example, the movie’s big death was originally written as a midair collision, but the Navy disapproved, so the scene was rewritten.

McGillis’ character was inspired by an actual flight instructor.  Christine Fox worked her way through the Pentagon before retiring in 2014 as Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense.  In the original script, her character was written as an officer.  But when the Navy objected to the depiction of two officers being romantically involved, she was demoted to a civilian.

The original script lacked a love scene for Cruise and McGillis.  Following test screenings, the decision was made to add a love screen during reshoots.  But by that point, the actors had started preparing for other projects and no longer looked the same.  McGillis’ hair was longer and dyed brown.  Since she couldn’t cut it, they stuck her in a baseball cap for the elevator scene and filmed the love scene in silhouette so her hair color wouldn’t be noticeable.

McGillis - Top Gun
Top Gun opened to mixed reviews.  Critics agreed that the aerial fights were spectacular but the rest of the movie was less impressive.  Audiences didn’t care.   They made Top Gun the highest grossing movie of the year.  Not only that, but according to the US Navy, their recruitment went up 500% after the movie’s release.  The movie tapped into the jingoism of the Reagan 80’s and the music video sensibilities of the MTV era.

According to McGillis, she wasn’t ready for the kind of fame Top Gun brought her:

It made me very unhappy, very untrusting of other people. I think you’d call it living terror. I was scared when I got recognised on the street. There are enough wacky people in the world, and I’d had enough crappy things happen to me before I was famous. When you’re recognisable, think how the chance of that multiplies.

More than thirty years later, Top Gun hasn’t aged all that well.  But that hasn’t prevented a long-delayed sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, currently filming for a summer 2019 release date.  As the title suggest, Cruise is back in the cockpit.  Val Kilmer will be along for the ride in some capacity.  McGillis isn’t expected to appear in the sequel although it’s possible she could film a cameo in secret.  She has gone on record that she is too old for Top Gun 2.

How Do You Top Top Gun?

Kelly McGillis - Made in Heaven - 1987
Kelly McGillis – Made in Heaven – 1987

Everyone knows that if you want to be a movie star, you have to capitalize on a massive hit like Top Gun.  Coming off of the biggest hit of 1986 not to mention Witness the year before, McGillis was primed for the A-list.  All she needed was one more box office smash to secure her status.    But instead of starring in another adrenaline charged action picture, McGillis choose a quirky romantic comedy about reincarnation.

McGillis starred opposite Timothy Hutton as a couple who finds true love in the afterlife.  Unfortunately, their eternal bliss is short-lived.  McGillis’ character still has unfinished business left on earth.  When she is sent back to earth to live out another life, Hutton bargains with a mysterious and androgynous figure played by his then-wife Debra Winger.  They strike a deal that will allow him to return to earth, but neither he nor McGillis will have any recollection of their time together in heaven.  It will be up to them to find each other and fall in love all over again.

If this all sounds schmaltzy, it is.  But it’s directed by Alan Rudolph who elevates the material along with his strong cast.  Most critics thought the movie missed the mark, but audiences with an appetite for cheesy love stories have discovered Made In Heaven‘s charm on video.  They sure didn’t see it in theaters.  Made in Heaven debuted in 13th place behind Dirty Dancing which had been in cineplexes for three months already.  Seven other movies opened that same weekend including the reincarnation-themed rom-com, Hello Again, which opened in second place behind Fatal Attraction.

Later that year, McGillis starred in the Israeli drama Ha-Holmim (aka Unsettled Land).  McGillis portrayed an Austrian doctor in a group of European pioneers who travel to Palestine in 1919 in order to establish a kibbutz in Galilee.  Not only was Unsettled Land a period drama costarring John Shea, it was set in the Middle East.  It’s hard to think of a project with less commercial appeal.  The movie premiered in the International Competition at the Tokyo Film Festival and showed at the Israel Him Festival in New York.  But outside of Israeli cinema, Unsettled Land went largely unnoticed.

Kelly McGillis - The House on Carroll Street - 1988
Kelly McGillis – The House on Carroll Street – 1988

In 1988, McGillis costarred opposite Jeff Daniels in the McCarthy-era thriller, The House on Carroll Street.  McGillis played a Life magazine editor who loses her job when she refuses to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee.  She takes a part-time job caring for an elder played by Jessica Tandy.  After witnessing a murder, McGillis goes to the police.  When they don’t believe her story, McGillis starts investigating the murder herself.  Daniels portrayed an FBI agent who comes to her aid.

Reviews were mixed.  Roger Ebert gave the movie a thumbs up and compared McGillis to Ingrid Bergman in Notorious.  But other critics were less enamored of the old-fashioned mystery.  The House on Carroll Street received a very limited theatrical release during which it grossed less than half a million dollars on a $14 million dollar budget.  Just two years after Top Gun, things were not looking good for McGillis’ career.

The Accused

Kelly McGillis - The Accused - 1988
Kelly McGillis – The Accused – 1988

Things turned around later that year when McGillis costarred opposite Jodie Foster in The Accused.

Foster played a girl who is gang-raped in a bar.  McGillis played the District Attorney who initially deals with the case by offering the defendants a plea bargain.  They get jail time, but Foster’s character is outraged when she is denied her day in court.  Eventually, she convinces McGillis to bring charges against the bar patrons who watched and cheered as she was assaulted.

The Accused was one of those movies that was attached to just about every well-known actress who was working at the time.  With two female leads to cast, actresses of every stripe auditioned.  Most of the A-listers at the time were intimidated by the movie’s subject matter.  Several well-known actresses passed on the two lead roles.  McGillis was offered the role of the rape victim that eventually won Jodie Foster an Oscar.  But having survived a similar experience, McGillis couldn’t bring herself to reenact a rape scene.

When the movie was released, McGillis publicly spoke about her experience for the first time.  She told People magazine:

Filming The Accused last year brought back a lot of the old nightmares, but I was very enthusiastic about an issue that so deeply affected my life. When the project was finished, it was like a demon had been put to rest, but still I was struggling with publicly telling my story because I was afraid. I felt so bad that I couldn’t tell the truth. Then in September I went to a fund-raising brunch at a Los Angeles rape treatment center and heard two victims talking about being raped on campus. As I listened, I thought that my not talking about my own experience was the most cowardly act of my life.

I wanted to help the people who haven’t talked about their experiences. Most rape victims don’t come forward. But that’s like saying, “Go ahead, assault me, because nothing is going to happen to you.” The only way to stop it is to talk about it. The thing I feel most passionate about is that victims talk and seek help. By not coming forward and trying to prosecute, you are making yourself a victim forever. You are allowing someone to change the rest of your life with one awful, ugly, horrifying deed.

In a cover story, McGillis talked about her harrowing experience, but she left out one detail.  She admitted that the experience made it hard for her to trust men and that she was not able to be intimate for several years.  She also discussed her recent divorce and her feelings of guilt.  But she left out the fact that she was involved in a lesbian relationship at the time and that she felt that she was being punished for being gay.  It would take the actress more than two decades before she would openly discuss that part of her life.

The Accused was a massive risk that had intimidated a lot of well-known Hollywood actresses.  But the risk paid off for Foster and McGillis.  Critics unanimously praised the movie and it performed surprisingly well at the box office.  Foster, whose career was in a rut at the time, took home a Best Actress Oscar for her performance.

How Quickly They Forget

Kelly McGillis - Winter People - 1989
Kelly McGillis – Winter People – 1989

McGillis followed up the personal triumph of The Accused with a movie that was unfavorably compared to one of her previous hits.  In The Winter People, McGillis played a single mother in a remote Appalachian community.  Kurt Russell costarred as a widower who moves into the village with his daughter in tow.  When Russell cozies up to the single mom, he gets in trouble with her baby daddy and his mountain clan.

Critics weren’t kind to the Depression-era drama.  Roger Ebert wrote that “the plot is like Witness turned inside out and played as a Li’l Abner parody.”  The movie opened in less than 300 theaters and grossed about $2 million dollars.

Later that year, McGillis starred opposite Peter Weller in Abel Ferrara’s adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel, Cat Chaser.  Weller played a veteran of the Dominican Republic Intervention who has settled into Miami where he runs a beachfront motel.  He begins a relationship with a woman played by McGillis who happens to be the wife of a former Dominican general.  Eventually, Weller becomes involved in a plan to steal from the general.

Others involved in the production admit that it was troubled.  Weller and McGillis didn’t get along.  According to Weller, McGillis told him upfront at their first meeting that she was the star of the movie.  McGillis surprised Ferrara by getting breast augmentation surgery before filming started.  The movie’s editor, Anthony Redman, said McGillis really wanted to look good during her nude scene.

Kelly McGillis - Cat Chaser - 1989
Kelly McGillis – Cat Chaser – 1989

The movie included a graphic rape scene.  By any standard, this scene was designed to push the limits.  Ferrara felt that the scene was too physical, so he wanted to have a body double shoot it.  According to Ferrara, McGillis was very upset when she learned she wouldn’t be shooting the scene.  He said that McGillis accused him of replacing her because he didn’t think she was beautiful enough:

I said, ‘What, are you kidding me? I’d never even think of replacing an actress with a double for that reason.’ I just thought maybe she’d want somebody, [at least] for the rehearsals. But she took it as, ‘Oh, I don’t think she’s beautiful enough and we’ve gotta have another girl,’ which is ridiculous, because she’s a beautiful woman.

Eventually, McGillis and Ferrara worked out the scene in a way that she could film it herself.  Ferrara claims that the actress essentially wrote the scene herself.

The movie faced additional obstacles.  There were problems with the script.  Leonard was paid $20,000 to rewrite the first 20 pages but ended up rewriting the whole thing only to have Ferrara reject the author’s adapted screenplay. There were also issues with shooting in the Dominican Republic, so scenes that were supposed to be shot there were relocated to Puerto Rico.

When Cat Chaser was finally released, the studio objected to Ferrara’s three-hour cut.  They chopped the runtime in half to a scant 90 minutes.  In order to give the movie a sense of continuity, the studio wanted Weller to record voice over narration which the actor refused to do.  So instead, they hired another actor to do it.  After all that, Cat Chaser ended up being released straight to video.  Instead of capitalizing on the success of The Accused, McGillis was stuck in direct-to-video purgatory.

According to McGillis, Cat Chaser was a miserable experience which drove her out of Hollywood:

It was the most hateful experience of my life and I said: ‘If this is what acting is going to be, I will not do it.’ On the last day of shooting, I said: ‘Are you done with me?’ He said: ‘Yeah’. I walked in my trailer and shaved my head. I said: ‘Screw you, I never want to act again’.  I got on a boat in the Caribbean and stayed for six months, in limbo. Then I got pregnant and things changed. It took me six months of soul-searching, nine months of pregnancy and a couple of plays, to say: ‘I do love acting. I just don’t want to work with assholes any more’.

Three Years Later…

McGillis - The Babe
Kelly McGillis – The Babe – 1992

McGillis put her career on hold for three years.  For a Hollywood actress, three years is an eternity.  When she returned to work, McGillis was no longer getting lead roles in mainstream movies.  Instead, she had a small supporting role in Arthur Hiller’s baseball biopic, The Babe.  John Goodman starred as the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth.  Trini Alvarado portrayed Ruth’s first wife, Helen Woodford and McGillis played Claire Hodgson, a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl who became the baseball legend’s second wife.

Reviews for The Babe were mixed, but Roger Ebert disliked it strongly enough to name it as one of the ten worst movies of the year.  It opened in fifth place at the box office behind the horror flop, Sleepwalkers.  If McGillis was hoping for a comeback, it was off to a slow start.

Later that year, she starred in the made-for cable movie, Grand Isle, based on Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening.  McGillis played an unhappily married woman in Louisiana in the 1890’s.  She meets and falls for a young, Creole arist played by Adrian Pasdar.  Julian Sands, Ellen Burstyn and Glenne Headly costarred.

Keeping Busy

Kelly McGillis - Bonds of Love 1993
Kelly McGillis – Bonds of Love 1993

Regular readers of the WTHH series know that once a movie star sets down the made-for-cable path, it’s hard to deviate from it.  That would hold true for McGillis.  In 1993, she starred opposite Treat Williams in the feel-good TV movie, The Bonds of Love.  Williams played a mentally disabled man who forges a friendship with a divorcee played by McGillis.  Their friendship turns to romantic love, but Williams’ family objects to their wedding.

The TV movies continued the following year with In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride & Madness.  Keith Carradine played a man who is terrorized by his ex-wife (McGillis) and her new boyfriend (Harry Hamlin).  The movie was based on the non-fiction novel Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder.  It still plays on cable in reruns under the title Bitter Blood.

Kelly McGillis - North - 1994
Kelly McGillis – North – 1994

Later that year, McGillis returned to the big screen in a comedy from an A-list director.  Unfortunately, that movie was Rob Reiner’s infamous flop, North.  Future hobbit, Elijah Wood starred as a boy who divorces his parents (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus).  He travels the world looking for new parents most of whom are played by celebrities.  McGillis and her Witness costar, Alexander Godunov, appeared as prospective Amish parents who are quickly rejected by North.

North was a spectacular flop.  Roger Ebert’s zero-star review of the movie is one of the most notorious take-downs of his career.  Ebert wrote:

I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

Fortunately for McGillis, North was nothing more than a cameo.  While North didn’t do anything to help revive her movie career, it didn’t do any damage either.

A decade after Top Gun, most of her costars from that movie were riding high.  Tom Cruise was one of the biggest movie stars in the world.  In 1996, he starred in the first Mission: Impossible movie.  Val Kilmer had taken over the role of Batman the previous summer.  His career was about to fall off, but that wouldn’t be apparent for a couple of years.  Anthony Edwards was appearing on the hit medical drama, E/R and Meg Ryan was still the undisputed queen of the rom com.  But McGillis spent most of the 1990’s stuck in movies made for basic cable.

Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer - At First Sight - 1999
Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer – At First Sight – 1999

In 1999, McGillis made her first appearance in a mainstream Hollywood movie since North five years earlier.  At First Sight reunited the actress with one of her Top Gun costars.  Val Kilmer starred as a blind masseur who meets and falls for a girl played by Mira Sorvino.  When the two start dating, Sorvino encourages her new beau to undergo an operation to regain his eyesight.  McGillis played Kilmer’s protective sister who lives next door.

At the time, Kilmer was still riding high on the success of his time as a superhero. Flops like At First Sight were warning signs that his time on the A-list was growing short.  But for McGillis, At First Sight was a victory of sorts.  This was her most substantial role in a Hollywood movie since The Babe seven years earlier.

Later that year, McGillis costarred opposite John C. Reilly and William Fichtner in the black comedy, The Settlement.  Fichtner and Reilly played two unscrupulous businessmen whose business is based on the real-life practice of buying up insurance policies from terminal patients at a discount and cashing them in when they die.  Unfortunately for them, new treatments for terminal diseases such as AIDS are allowing their clients to live longer which is ruining their business.  McGillis plays a mysterious woman with a $2 million dollar life insurance policy who may be more healthy than she lets on.

Kelly McGillis - The Monkey's Mask - 2000
Kelly McGillis – The Monkey’s Mask – 2000

As the nineties gave way to the aughts, McGillis found work on TV shows like The Outer Limits.  She also appeared in movies you probably haven’t heard of.   In the year 2000, McGillis starred in the thriller, The Monkey’s Mask.  Susie Porter played an out-of-work private investigator who takes up the case of a missing student.  Her investigation leads her to the girl’s poetry instructor played by McGillis.  McGillis’ character takes her on a tour of the lesbian underworld the missing student inhabited.  When the girl turns up dead, Porter continues looking for the killer.  As the investigation continues she becomes romantically involved with McGillis.

The movie was coproduced by several countries including Australia, Canada, France and Japan.  The Monkey’s Mask would have been risky material for McGillis at the peak of her career.  But at this point, she had nothing to lose.

Coming Out Slowly

 
Kelly McGillis and Fred Tillman - 1999
Kelly McGillis and Fred Tillman – 1999

Now is probably a good time to discuss McGillis’ second marriage.  In 1989, McGillis married yacht salesman Fred Tillman.  During their thirteen-year marriage, the couple had two daughters.  But from the outset, McGillis struggled with a traditional marriage.  “Deep inside I always knew it wasn’t the truth.  I was never dishonest with Fred about my past and history, but it was a big struggle with me.”

The couple moved to Key West Florida and opened a bar called Kelly’s.  Tillman was arrested just days after McGillis gave birth to their second daughter.  He had solicited sex from a prostitute who turned out to be an undercover police officer.  Meanwhile, McGillis was starting a relationship with a bartender she met at Kelly’s.  According to Melanie Leis, “We were partners in crime and were both drinking and abusing drugs.”

Eventually, they got sober together.  McGillis divorced Tillman in 2002.  She and Leis moved to rural Pennsylvania to raise her kids.  The move was intended to help McGillis maintain her sobriety.  “The honest truth is, I lived in a halfway house in that area.”

Kelly McGillis - Shakespeare Theatre Company's Macbeth - 2004
Kelly McGillis – Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Macbeth – 2004

McGillis would spend five years away from Hollywood, but she didn’t give up acting.  Throughout her career, McGillis continued to work in stage productions.  Even during her hiatus, McGillis continued working in theater including the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Macbeth and the touring version of The Graduate.

Kelly McGillis - The L-Word - 2008
Kelly McGillis – The L-Word – 2008

In 2008, McGillis played a military prosecutor on two episodes of HBO’s lesbian drama, The L-Word.  At the time, McGillis remained in the closet about her own sexuality.  She found her Pennsylvania neighbors were less than accepting of her same-sex relationship.  “My kids suffered a great deal because I was with Mell, and that bothered me a lot, and so I never chose to talk about it.”

That changed in 2009 when McGillis did an interview with SheWired.com and announced she was “done with the man thing.”  Now that her kids were grown and out of the house, the actress felt like she could finally tell the truth,  “I really didn’t have to protect anyone by skirting the question, and I just decided to be absolutely honest.”

Kelly McGillis and Melanie Leis - 2010
Kelly McGillis and Melanie Leis – 2010

In 2010, McGillis formed a civil union with her longtime girlfriend, Melanie Leis.  I would like to tell you that this was the happy ending to McGillis’ story, but unfortunately that was not the case.  The couple had broken up and reconciled prior to getting engaged.  In 2011, they finally broke up for good.

Nowadays…

Kelly McGillis - Stake Land - 2010
Kelly McGillis – Stake Land – 2010

In 2010, recent years, McGillis has found work as a supporting actress.  She has appeared in a lot of genre projects like the vampire movie, Stake Land, and the zombie show, Z NationStake Land director Jim Mickle cast McGillis again in his gothic horror movie, We Are What We Are in 2013.

 
 
McGillis home invasion
Kelly McGillis – 2016

In 2016, McGillis was injured during a home invasion.  She interrupted a burglary in her home in North Carolina.  The 38-year-old woman brought her young daughter as an accomplice.  When McGillis noticed their sandals by the door, she called out.  She was expecting one of her daughters to answer but was instead assaulted by a stranger.  McGillis asked her assailant why she had broken in to her home.  The woman claimed that McGillis had been stalking her on Twitter.

Since McGillis keeps guns in her home, she worried that the burglar may have found one.  So she fled her home in search of help.  The woman pursued her and punched her as she fled.  A motorist saw what was going on and pulled over to call 911.  The burglar was arrested and McGillis recovered from the assault.  Of the incident, she wrote “Who I feel heartache for is the little girl who was with her. Mental illness takes many hostages. I don’t know her name… but I would like to asked (sic) that you pray for her and her mother.”

So, what the hell happened?

McGillis became famous practically overnight.  Top Gun was only her third theatrical film.  That level of fame is tough for anyone to deal with, but McGillis was completely unprepared.  She was dealing with some crippling personal issues as a closeted gay woman and a rape survivor.  Unfortunately, she dealt with those problems by self-medicating.  The drugs and alcohol only made things worse.

Eventually, something had to give.  Unhappy with her career, McGillis walked away from Hollywood.  She never fully stopped acting, but she avoided the harsh spotlight of a mainstream movie career.  Today, she continues to work on television, stage and screen.

5 3 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

43 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
daffystardust
Editor
7 years ago

This is an excellent addition to the What the Hell Happened series! McGillis’ story really is a sad one. It’s actually pretty impressive that she has survived in the work as well as she has. Often, victims of the sort of trauma that she experienced will go out of their way to put a barrier between themselves and other people, which is the opposite of what a good actress should be doing. But I do remember feeling like there was a hard outer layer to many of McGillis’ performances and in-person interviews. The vulnerability she was able to allow herself… Read more »

kevthewriter
7 years ago

Great article!
Also, wow, I didn’t realize her story was so sad!

jestak2
Editor
7 years ago

Very nice appreciation of Kelly McGillis’s career. It’s great to see the return of the WTHH series! I think sometimes it’s easy to lose sight, in our present era where coming out is just another thing people do, that as recently as the 1980s that was something that was very, very rare. I came across a list of “celebrities who came out in the 1980s” and noticed that 1) it was pretty short, and 2) of the entertainers on the list (which also included 2 or 3 politicians and tennis stars Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova), virtually all of… Read more »

daffystardust
Editor
7 years ago
Reply to  jestak2

Elton John came out at the height of his popularity and then got married to a woman some time after that when he was still pretty huge. Then he got divorced and re-confirmed what we all already knew. He went through quite a lot of personal trouble and there’s no telling how much of it was connected to anxiety over his sexual preferences and how parts of society and people he knew might judge him. It could not have helped with his drug dependencies and multiple suicide attempts. Somehow his career never really suffered through all of it. Some of… Read more »

Leo
Leo
7 years ago

Good Bad Flicks: Stake Land (2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfJyKCSeDsE

Stewart
Stewart
7 years ago

Great to see the return of What the Hell Just Happened. Hope it isn’t long before the next one. It would be interesting if you made other carrear assesment. Perhaps along the lines of How The Hell Did they successfully navigate there carrear and keep on top for so long?

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago

I knew Kelly McGillis came out a few years ago, but I had no idea that she & her girlfriend were raped in the early 1980’s. Like what Daffy said, she’s a strong woman to set aside the issues of sexual identity & an extremely traumatic situation to continue pursuing acting. And what mainstream acting that was for McGillis: “Witness” (love, it, love it) “Top Gun” (never cared a lot for it, or the NES game either) and “The Accused” (powerful, and it can be understood why she’s be interested in the material). I also viewed “The House on Carroll… Read more »

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

After I read this article, I read another article that said she was gang-raped when she was 12 too, and another time she was mugged! Yeesh, there’s no wonder why she felt she was being punished. She surely has experienced the dark side of the human condition much too often.

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)
Reply to  admin

It seems like she let herself go quite a lot (Kelly McGillis wasn’t really a delicate beauty in the first place), probably because all of her troubled life: being raped, then getting into alcohol and drugs because of that, and then still the same alcohol and drugs story because of being unhappily married to a man before getting married to the woman she loves. During her “Top Gun” prime, she had a mature look to her, not a conventional “hot” look. Something like that is perfect for an intelligent character role. Her cheekbones gave her a distinct look, but her… Read more »

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago

Kelly McGillis is a real “What The Hell Happened?” for me, since I kind of forgot about her for the longest time (beginning in the early 1990’s) until I began re-watching “Witness” or remembering “Top Gun” (I actually just took an online survey quiz in which the questions pointed a lot to McGillis’ Charlie character, and I got most of them right. For someone who doesn’t really like “Top gun” all that much anymore, I was surprised. I suppose I was channeling my inner Tom Skerritt). Some of the other subjects I’m still pretty familiar with, but until recently that… Read more »

brokencandy
brokencandy
7 years ago

That “Bonds of Love” tv movie sounds a lot like the Australian film Tim that Mel Gibson was in before he was famous in the US. He plays a mildly retarded young man who gets hired to do some yard work for an older American business woman played by Piper Laurie. The two grow close and fall in love, but Tim’s family thinks he doesn’t have the capacity to consent and thinks Laurie’s character is a dirty old woman taking advantage of his innocence. I’m pretty sure the American tv movie had to have been based on it, the description… Read more »

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago
Reply to  lebeau

I just looked up “Bond of Love” on IMDB and the one external review states in the beginning that he thought it was going to be a TV remake of “Tim” until realizing it was a true story. I viewed “Tim” about four year ago; I liked it.

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

How the 1980s Defined the Look of Movie Sex Scenes http://www.vulture.com/2016/10/how-the-1980s-defined-movie-sex-scenes.html Picture a movie sex scene — not one in particular, but the archetypal notion of one. Does it involve a tastefully topless actress throwing her head back in ecstasy as our leading man nibbles down the length of her neck? Is the romp shot in slow-mo and bathed in cool blue light, our actors’ hair backlit like golden halos? And is there a sensitive plinking of piano on the soundtrack to signify tender lovemaking, or, if the fucking’s real good, a wailing saxophone? If so, the 1980s did a… Read more »

moviefan
moviefan
7 years ago

The Accused is garbage. This 04 review on imdb is worth pasting. I completely agree with it except for the sidenote about Silence: “Cheap exploitation flick. Wretched performance by Foster. Shot in an annoyingly pedestrian, TV docudrama style. Make no mistake about it: the protracted flashback near the film’s end is there for the sole purpose of titillating the audience. How “The Accused” garnered so much respect from the press eludes me. Foster even won an Oscar for her performance! (Which was followed by a statue for her so-so work in the god-awful “Silence of the Lambs.”) This is a… Read more »

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago
Reply to  moviefan

Yeah, I think “The Accused” is overrated, and that rape flashback was unnecessary; I think words would’ve been fine.

moviefan
moviefan
7 years ago
Reply to  admin

I saw potential chemistry between JF with the actor who played her boyfriend, Tom O’Brien. Which for her is unheard of. The movie would’ve benefitted from expanding his character. He’s barely in it at all.

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago
Reply to  moviefan

Yeah, I thought he was pretty good and played a useful character in the limited screen time he had; The film features mostly only McGillis & Foster, so I guess that’s what the script was going for. Still, his character could’ve lasted a little longer.

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

What the cast of Top Gun looks like today http://www.looper.com/39154/cast-top-gun-looks-like-today/ Kelly McGillis (Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Blackwood) Kelly McGillis was already well on her way to becoming a star by the time Top Gun flew into theaters, having starred opposite Harrison Ford in Witness the previous year. While McGillis wasn’t personally recognized among the nominations, Witness received Oscar nods in a total of eight categories and put the actress on the map. She followed up her successful turn as Maverick’s love interest Charlie with a role as an assistant district attorney in 1988’s The Accused, a film that won the Best Actress… Read more »

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

Re: Kim Basinger at the Los Angeles Premiere of Universal Pictures Fifty Shades Darker at the Ace Hotel Theatre. 2/2/17
http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php/1140143-Kim-Basinger-at-the-Los-Angeles-Premiere-of-Universal-Pictures-Fifty-Shades-Darker-at-the-Ace-Hotel-Theatre-2-2-17?p=29668017&viewfull=1#post29668017
Kim was sexy; but white women tend to have masculine features that don’t age well; which is ironic since they are presented as being the most feminine women. You can tell even this photo that she probably wasn’t going to age nicely.
Same with Kelly McGillis. Attractive but masculine; you could tell she would age to be masculine and unattractive like most white women, and she did….

moviefan
moviefan
7 years ago

The posters in that thread are clueless regarding Basinger. Posting photos taken when she was 37 and 35 to argue that she “was never a beauty” or “you could tell she wasn’t going to age well” is just ridiculous.
Kim was in her prime between ages 27 (when she started lightening her hair, sometime in 1981) and 32. Blind Date was the first movie where facially she was anything less than perfect. The film she looked best in, IMO is a toss up between Mother Lode and Never Say Never Again.

admin
Admin
admin
7 years ago
Reply to  moviefan

I think there are many posters out there (excluding present site) who have comments that aren’t very objective or constructive.

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)
Reply to  moviefan

In the case for “Blind Date”, I wonder if Kim looking “less than perfect” was kind of intentional on her or the producers’ part. Maybe it’s because it was one of the rare cases in which Kim doesn’t sport her trademark platinum blonde hair (“Even Money”, which has Kim as a redhead, ironically like Vicki Vale in the comic books, is another one) Also the whole point of that movie if I’m not mistaken, was that Kim played this passive, unassuming girl who suddenly “turns crazy” when she has even the slightest taste of alcohol.

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

What Happened to Kelly McGillis – News & Updates http://gazettereview.com/2017/02/happened-kelly-mcgillis-news-updates/ By Brooke Carter – Feb 23, 2017 California-born actress Kelly McGillis starred in several high-profile films during the 80’s including Witness (1985), Top Gun (1986), and The Accused (1988). Having always gravitated toward the performing arts, she moved to New York City to study acting at New York’s renewed Julliard School after graduating from high school in 1975. While honing her skills at the institute, she starred in a production of Love for Love, a comedy by William Congreve. At one point, she also studied at Santa Monica’s Pacific Conservatory… Read more »

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

Cannes: ‘Top Gun’ Star Kelly McGillis to Play Midwest Crime Queen in ‘Annie Cook’ (EXCLUSIVE)
http://variety.com/2017/film/global/cannes-top-gun-kelly-mcgillis-crime-queen-annie-cook-1202424633/

Leo
Leo
6 years ago

Time for a birthday gallery!

Nonno Ono
6 years ago

I very much enjoy your What the Hell Happened series. Thanks a bunch!
http://i0.poll.fm/js/rating/rating.js

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=390555#post390555 Kelly McGillis For much of the ’80s, Kelly McGillis was one of the hottest, most in-demand actresses in Hollywood. She has a terrific debut in Reuben, Reuben (1983). That was Tom Conti’s movie, he was rightly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar as the depressed alcoholic writer, but as great as he was the true find in the production was the twenty-six-year-old McGillis. Her next film was Witness (1985), another Oscar-nominated film that had a kind of mainstream popularity Reuben didn’t. As the Amish woman unwillingly drawn into the modern world when her young son sees a murder in… Read more »

Leo
Leo
5 years ago

Whatever Happened to Kelly McGillis? http://www.looper.com/132974/whatever-happened-to-kelly-mcgillis/ Kelly McGillis was a huge Hollywood sensation in the 1980s. She found fame during the decade thanks to roles in a number of dramas and thrillers, but she’ll forever be known as Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, a flight instructor (with a Ph.D in astrophysics) who strikes up an affair with star pupil Maverick (Tom Cruise) in the 1986 action classic Top Gun. McGillis also lit up the screen with Harrison Ford in the amish mystery thriller Witness, and played a crusading assistant D.A. along with Jodie Foster in the Oscar-winning The Accused. While the 80s… Read more »

Terrence Clay (TMC1982)

Her private life seems to have been very messy from the early ’90s onwards which would explain why her career took a nosedive. Besides having a rough time with being closeted, she married a man for a while and while she was giving birth he was arrested for having sex with a hooker. And Kelly she stayed with him for a while after that! With that being said, as an actress, I wonder if Kelly McGillis’ issue for why she didn’t have more longevity is because she could be very intense. What I mean is that she could not really… Read more »

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

Top Gun alum Kelly McGillis says she was not asked to be in upcoming sequel to Tom Cruise blockbuster and reveals why she left Hollywood: ‘I got sober and my priorities changed’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7290767/Top-Gun-alum-Kelly-McGillis-says-not-asked-sequel-Tom-Cruise-blockbuster.html Kelly McGillis won’t be part of the Top Gun sequel coming summer 2020. The 62-year-old beauty – who played Tom Cruise’s love interest in the 1986 blockbuster – revealed she was not asked to be part of Top Gun: Maverick during an interview with ET on Friday. And the actress explained why she left Hollywood at the height of her fame by saying: ‘It just… it didn’t… Read more »

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

I’m not at all surprised that Kelly McGillis hasn’t been invited back for the Top Gun sequel. To be brutally frank, Kelly first and foremost has not aged well. She’s a woman in her 60s, but not in a way like say Sharon Stone or Michelle Pfeiffer. If you put her the way that she looks now next to Tom Cruise (who is in his late 50s, but as aged very well and can easily pass off as younger), it would be extremely obvious. I hate to say this, but if you’re going to be an A-list leading lady (and… Read more »

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

Kelly McGillis, 62, says she is ‘too old and fat’ for Top Gun sequel with Tom Cruise: ‘I look age-appropriate for what my age is, and that is not what that whole scene is about’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7301527/Kelly-McGillis-says-old-fat-Gun-sequel-Tom-Cruise.html Kelly McGillis has been very upfront about why Hollywood is no longer courting her. In an interview with ET the 62-year-old actress – who diagnosed with alpha one antitrypsin disorder about five years ago – was unusually candid about why she was not asked to co-star with Tom Cruise in the Top Gun sequel titled Maverick. ‘I’m old and I’m fat and I look… Read more »

Terrence Clay (@TMC1982)

What Kelly McGillis from Top Gun looks like today https://www.looper.com/160937/what-kelly-mcgillis-from-top-gun-looks-like-today/ The 1986 release of Top Gun placed actress Kelly McGillis firmly in the ’80s the pop culture zeitgeist. Her role as Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, the astrophysicist and civilian instructor at the TOPGUN flight school, won viewers over — as did her on-screen romance with Tom Cruise’s U.S. Naval Aviator character Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. When word got out that Paramount Pictures was readying a Top Gun sequel to take flight, many wondered what McGillis has been up to in the 23 years since Top Gun soared into cinemas. Here’s what Kelly McGillis from Top Gun looks like today.  Now… Read more »

43
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x