Why Top Gun’s Kelly McGillis was SNUBBED from sequel after unrecognisable twice-married star quit fame & came out as gay
SHE was once one of Hollywood’s most desirable leading ladies after starring opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun, but these days you'd do well to recognise Kelly McGillis.
The 64-year-old played Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell's flight instructor and love interest, Charlie Blackwood, in the original 1986 movie - but won’t be in the sequel out later this month.
Mum-of-two Kelly, who took a big step back from Hollywood at the height of her fame, has ditched her trademark blonde locks and swapped a glamorous wardrobe for casual baggy trousers and T-shirts.
She has endured more than her fair share of heartache, including two disastrous marriages before coming out as gay in 2010.
At the time Kelly opened up about a harrowing gang-rape ordeal when she was 24, which she became convinced was a "punishment" from God for her sexuality.
Kelly turned to alcohol to numb the pain, which would eventually see her check into rehab and overcome her addictions.
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‘Punished for being gay’
After growing up in Newport Beach, California, Kelly moved to New York in 1979 when her parents kicked her out aged 17 - something she has since said was "the best thing they could have ever done for me".
"I was an incredibly rebellious teenager," Kelly told Philadelphia Gay News. "I thought I should be 18 and have all the privileges of 18 when I was 13. I was just out of control."
Once in New York she enrolled as a drama student at Juilliard School, where she met her first husband Boyd Black - whom she married later that year in an attempt to win back her parents' approval.
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The couple split amicably in 1981. That same year, Kelly was robbed at gunpoint.
In 1982 Kelly began dating a woman and they moved into a flat together, but tragedy struck when two teenage boys broke in and tied the two women up both up before raping them.
“They kept switching and telling me they were going to beat me until I was dead,” Kelly told .
“At that point I thought I would die, and I had resigned myself.”
Eventually, police arrived. Kelly identified one of her attackers, 15-year-old Leroy Johnson - who was on the run from juvenile detention - from mug shots.
He pleaded guilty and was jailed for three years. The identity of the other boy was never made public.
Kelly kept the ordeal secret for years, even from her family, and later admitted: “I created this story that I’m being punished for being gay.”
History repeating
Kelly has since revealed it wasn’t the first time she’d been raped. In June 2016, a break-in and assault at her home reopened old wounds.
In a raw Facebook post, she claimed she'd been gang-raped by three men when she was 12. Kelly also alleged someone from her past had once stalked her and attempted to poison her pets and destroy her belongings.
She wrote: “After each one of these attacks I moved thinking I could find a safe place. Not.
"I am now left with all the terrifying feelings of PTSD and trying to pull myself out of the very depth of the all consuming depression and despair.
"All that background pain has pushed itself to the fore of my psyche.”
The experience led Kelly to apply for a concealed carry gun to protect herself.
Blackout drinking
After the New York attack, Kelly struggled to eat or sleep and "twitched incessantly", eventually turning to alcohol to numb the pain.
She admitted she would wake up after a big night out not knowing where — or with whom — she had been.
Kelly's talent ensured she still managed to bag leading roles in Witness, starring as an Amish widow alongside Harrison Ford, and Top Gun, which made her a household name.
She was offered the role of the rape victim in the 1988 film The Accused, which she turned down as she was still struggling to come to terms with the rape. Instead, she played the prosecutor.
Quit Hollywood
Kelly had begun dating men again when she made the shock decision to walk away from her glittering film career to get married and start a family.
She wed Fred Tillman, a rich yacht salesman, in 1989. The couple moved to Key West Florida, where they opened a restaurant called Kelly’s.
She welcomed two children - Kelsey, now 31, and Sonora, 29 - but her life started to unravel again when, just four days after giving birth to her youngest, Tillman was arrested and fined $250 for propositioning a prostitute, who turned out to be an undercover policewoman.
They weathered the storm, but eventually divorced in 2002.
Meanwhile Kelly's dependence on drugs and alcohol had got worse - something she referred to as a "coping mechanism for all the s*** I created in my life" - and she checked into rehab.
Tillman was awarded custody of their daughters while she recovered, and nine months later she worked hard to rebuild her relationship with her kids, turning down opportunities to return to acting.
Gay love affair
During her marriage, Kelly had grown close to one of the restaurant's bartenders - Melanie Leis, also a recovering alcoholic.
The actress said getting sober encouraged her to accept her sexuality, and in 2009, she came out as a lesbian, announcing on SheWired.com: “I’m done with the man thing.”
The following year she entered into a civil partnership with Melanie - though their relationship wasn't plain sailing.
Sources at the time said Melanie had struggled with Kelly's resistance to publicly acknowledge her as her partner, and the couple had split several times during their 10 year romance.
Kelly admitted her children had been "very understanding" about her sexuality, but she worried about their friends and friends' parents, who were less so.
She and Melanie split in 2013, and Kelly - who had by this point added a few more film and TV credits to her CV - threw herself into working with drug addicts and alcoholics at a rehab centre.
She told The Oklahoman newspaper in 2013: “I find it’s just an amazing gift to see people come in hopeless and to be given some hope and some desire to live, and some tools for hopefully changing their lives, their children’s lives, their families’ lives.”
That year Kelly began teaching acting at the New York Studio for Stage and Screen NYS3 in Asheville, North Carolina.
'I'm old and I'm fat'
Kelly reckons she’s been turned down for starring roles in recent years because she refuses to have plastic surgery or dye her now-grey hair back to its infamous blonde.
She said: “For a long, long time, I really tried to be something I’m not — and I have to say it ruined my life in a lot of ways.”
But Top Gun director Joseph Kosinski said the reason she isn’t in the sequel is down to him wanting to move the story along with new characters - and Kelly claims she’s happy with that.
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"I'm old, and I'm fat," she said. "And I look age-appropriate for what my age is. And that is not what that whole scene is about.
"I'd much rather feel absolutely secure in my skin and my age than place any value in all that other stuff."