Kelly McGillis walked away from Hollywood at the height of her fame to embark on a journey of sobriety and self-discovery.
The Juilliard School-trained actress burst onto screens with a riveting portrayal of an Amish woman dragged into a murder conspiracy in 1985’s Witness, which earned her Golden Globe Award nomination. An unforgettable romantic pairing with Tom Cruise in Top Gun followed in 1986, before McGillis took her first of multiple breaks from acting in the early 1990s.
After moving away from Los Angeles, McGillis opened up a restaurant called Kelly’s Caribbean Bar & Grill in Key West, Florida in 1993, according to The AP. The Top Gun star said she picked Key West partially because the vibe was so different from Hollywood.
“It’s got a very European attitude,” McGillis said. “There’s a certain tolerance here that’s quickly vanishing from the rest of America.”
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Kelly’s Caribbean Bar & Grill later closed down and McGillis resumed her acting career. Away from the screen, McGillis has been married twice — first to Boyd Black prior to her Hollywood breakout success and later to entrepreneur Fred Tillman from 1989 to 2002. The actress shares two children — daughters Kelsey, born 1990, and Sonora, born 1993 — with Tillman.
According to NBC News, McGillis revealed during a 2009 appearance on the “Girl Rock!” webseries that she was “done with the man thing” following her divorce from Tillman and was “definitely [looking for] a woman.”
“[Coming out] was an ongoing process from the time I was probably 12,” she said. “I had a lot of things happen that convinced me that God was punishing me because I was gay.”
McGillis entered into a civil union with sales executive Melanie Leis in 2009, though they split in 2013 . She later moved to North Carolina, where she has continued to teach acting.
A terrifying ordeal took place in 2016 when a woman allegedly broke into McGillis’ Henderson County, North Carolina home and assaulted her. The intruder was apprehended and told reporters she had “nothing to say to Ms. McGillis” after being convicted of misdemeanor breaking and entering in 2017. She was sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation, according to local news reports.
At the time, McGillis wrote via Facebook that the home invasion incident convinced her to apply for a concealed carry weapons permit in order to defend herself.
“I’m still a bit shook up and struggling with some residual fear. I do have an alarm. I was complacent and didn’t set it after living here four years and having nothing happen,” McGillis wrote. “I have decided to get a conceal and carry permit.”
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The actress added, “[The suspect] was apprehended. I’m alright. Scratched and bruise[d]. I feel very thankful it turned out well.”
McGillis continues to act sporadically, most recently making guest appearances in zombie apocalypse show Z Nation in 2014 and the true crime-inspired docudrama Dirty John in 2020.
While archival footage of McGillis is included in Cruise’s long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick, the actress did not film new scenes as her character Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood. McGillis confirmed to Entertainment Tonight in 2019 that she simply wasn’t asked back for the sequel.
“Movies are odd things. I don’t really keep in touch with anybody,” she admitted. “I think I’ve spoken to a couple of people occasionally, but the truth is, movies are very odd work situations because you have a lot of people who come together from all different parts of the world.”
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Cruise is reportedly developing a third Top Gun movie so there’s still a chance for a reunion with McGillis on the big screen. McGillis also shared with ET that her most recent break from Hollywood was to “get sober” and begin a “journey to figure out who the hell” she was.
“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 said in 2019. “And it just – it didn’t become a priority; what became the priority initially was raising my girls and being the best sober parent I could be.”
“I think just my priorities in life changed,” she continued. “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.”
