Top Gun's Kelly McGillis has totally different life 40 years on from Tom Cruise collaboration
Topics: Tom Cruise, Hollywood, Nostalgia, Film and TV, Celebrity
Niamh Shackleton
Featured Image Credit: CBS via Getty Images
Topics: Tom Cruise, Hollywood, Nostalgia, Film and TV, Celebrity
It's been 40 years since Tom Cruise first put on his aviator sunglasses as Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell — and cinema has never been the same.
Released in 1986, Top Gun quickly became a cult classic and is often credited for propelling Cruise into worldwide stardom.
Cruise, who was around the age of 24 at the time of the movie's release, already had several credits to his name prior to taking on the role of the ever-iconic Maverick, but he became a household name with the help of Top Gun.
Now 63, Cruise has been in dozens of movies with 2022's Top Gun: Maverick topping the list of some of his most successful films to date, boasting an impressive 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Advert
While Cruise has stayed in the public eye following Top Gun's 1986 success, the same can't be said about his co-star Kelly McGillis, who starred as Maverick's love interest Charlie Blackwood in the original movie.
McGillis is now 68 years old and is believed to have once resided in North Carolina after ditching Hollywood many years ago.
As well as Top Gun, other film credits for McGillis include Witness, The Accused, Cat Chaser, and The Monkey's Mask.
Her last film role is thought to have been as Rose Lewis in 2018's Maternal Secrets but, in comparison to her theatrical run in the 1980s, McGillis has largely stepped away from acting.
McGillis used to be married to Fred Tillman, whom she shares two daughters with. During her hiatus from Hollywood, McGillis lived in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, to raise her kids, according to realestate.com. Then the 68-year-old resided in Hendersonville, North Carolina, for some time.
As of 2019, it was reported that she lived in Collingswood, New Jersey.
McGillis said that stepping back form acting wasn't a 'major decision' for her, instead her priorities just changed.
"It was very challenging for me to have any kind of sense of self or self-identity or real self-worth other than what I did for a living," she told Entertainment Tonight (ET) in 2019.
"[Acting] didn't become a priority; what became the priority initially was raising my girls and being the best sober parent I could be."
The actress battled alcohol addiction for many years and, following the end of her marriage to Tillman, she went to rehab. McGillis now dedicates her life to working with others with addiction issues and, as of this year, she worked full-time at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in South Jersey, according to HELLO!.
McGillis went on to tell ET in her interview: "I think just my priorities in life changed. It wasn't like a major decision that I made to leave, it was just that other things became more important.
"I love acting, I love what I do, I love doing theater, but I don't know. To me, my relationships to other people became far more important than my relationship to fame."
Hot off the heels of Witness' success, which she starred in alongside Harrison Ford, McGillis was recruited for Top Gun — but she didn't want to do the movie.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2001, the actress admitted: "I didn't want to do it. But because I'd done Witness, I owed Paramount another film, and my agent said, 'You have to do this.'
"I took one look at it and said, 'This is like a Western in the sky—I don't wanna do this.' It wasn't about acting, it was about being a cartoon character. You know what I mean? I could have done it blindfolded. I was grateful for the fact that it gave me opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have had."
Reportedly McGillis wasn't asked to reprise her role of Charlie in Top Gun: Maverick.