Kelly McGillis Biography
On July 9, 1957, Kelly Ann McGillis was born. is a Hollywood actress. Her filmography includes roles as Charlie in Top Gun (1986), The House on Carroll Street (1988), Rachel Lapp in Witness (1985), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, and as Kathryn Murphy in The Accused (1988). She has acted in horror movies including The Innkeepers (2011), Stake Land (2010), and We Are What We Are (2013) in her later career.
Kelly McGillis Early life
In the southern California enclave of Newport Beach, on July 9, 1957, Virginia Joan (née Snell), a homemaker, and Donald Manson McGillis, a physician, had their first daughter, McGillis.* She has German maternal ancestry, Welsh maternal ancestry, and Scots-Irish paternal ancestry. She went to high school at Newport Harbor.
Raised in Los Angeles, McGillis studied at Allan Hancock College’s Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, California. She dropped out of high school in 1975 and obtained a GED before moving to New York City to study acting at the Juilliard School, from which she graduated in 1983 as a Group 12 student.
Kelly McGillis Career
Film
Following her 1983 film début in Reuben, Reuben, McGillis’s breakthrough performance came in Witness (1985), where she played an Amish mother and was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. Her next well-known performance was as flight instructor Charlotte Blackwood (often known as “Charlie”) in Tom Cruise’s fighter-pilot movie Top Gun from 1986.
McGillis starred in the 1987 Lorimar Productions romantic picture Made in Heaven, which was helmed by Alan Rudolph.
In 1988’s The House on Carroll Street, starring Jeff Daniels, McGillis has the role of caregiver for Miss Venable (Jessica Tandy). She thinks she’s stumbled across a plot to sneak Nazi war criminals into the United States after overhearing a disturbing conversation at the home next door.
She starred opposite Peter Weller in Cat Chaser after 1988’s The Accused, a movie she hated and which made her give up on acting. Throughout the 1990s, McGillis starred in numerous TV and movie roles before taking a few years off from acting.
In the 1992 film The Babe, McGillis portrayed Claire Merritt Ruth, Babe Ruth’s second wife. From the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, McGillis starred in multiple made-for-TV movies, Winter People (1989), and North (1994), her second Amish role in movies or television.
McGillis reteamed with Val Kilmer (as the blind man Virgil) in 1999’s At First Sight, when she played his overly protective sister.
She portrayed the suspect in the 2000 international lesbian cult hit The Monkey’s Mask, starring Susie Porter, about the disappearance of a young woman. The movie is based on Australian poet Dorothy Porter’s poem novel of the same name.
Television
One of McGillis’s earliest TV appearances was in the 1984 daytime serial One Life to Live.
Alongside Alec Baldwin, she acted in the 1984 television film Sweet Revenge (sometimes referred to as Bittersweet Revenge).
She acted as narrator in Santabear’s First Christmas and in Private Sessions, two other television movies from the 1980s. In 1995, she also provided the narration for the PBS documentary Out of Ireland.
Stage
She participated in John Bletchley’s production of William Congreve’s Love for Love while she was a student at Juilliard. In the 1980s, she made appearances in a few Broadway and off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City.
McGillis was a featured performer at the esteemed Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, from the late 1980s to the mid 2000s. She performed in the Shakespeare Theatre’s 2002 staging of John Webber’s “The Duchess of Malfi” in Washington, DC.
She made her stage debut as Mrs. Robinson in the 2004 national tour of The Graduate.20] In May 2009, McGillis and Julia Duffy co-starred in the Pasadena Playhouse’s theatrical adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes.
In addition to additional roles in Love for Love, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Three Sisters, and The Winter’s Tale, her stage work includes the following: Don Juan (1982), The Sea Gull (1985), Peccadillo (1985), The Merchant of Venice (1988), Twelfth Night (1989), Mary Stuart (1990), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1990), Hedda Gabler (1994), Mourning Becomes Electra (1997), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999), Measure for Measure (1999), and The Graduate (2004).
She also participated in Terrence McNally’s 2010 tour of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune in the United Kingdom.
Return to film and TV
In 2006, she resumed her career in television, and for the fifth season of Showtime’s The L Word, she joined the cast in 2007.
She starred with Nick Damici, Connor Paolo, and Danielle Harris in the Jim Mickle-directed vampire movie Stake Land (2010).
2010 saw the publication of the breast cancer docu-drama 1 a Minute, which starred McGillis.
She starred in Grand Street, Love Finds You in Sugarcreek, Ohio (McGillis’s third Amish-themed movie), Z Nation, an episode of Sisters of Mercy in 2014, Blue in 2015, and Ti West’s thriller The Innkeepers (2011).
McGillis’s fourth Amish-themed movie was An Uncommon Grace on Hallmark Channel. and she played Rose Lewis in the lead role of Mother of All Secrets, which was filmed in Bermuda in 2017.
Kelly McGillis Personal life
In 1979, McGillis wed Boyd Black, a fellow Juilliard student; the two later got divorced in 1981. They had two daughters together since her 1989 marriage to Fred Tillman. In 2002, the couple got divorced.
In April 1996, a fire at a dock in Dania, Florida, destroyed the Centurion, a 110-foot schooner that belonged to McGillis and her then-husband, Fred Tillman, and was worth at $1.5 million. At the Port LauDania port on the Dania Cutoff Canal, the fire originated on a nearby boat and quickly spread to the schooner. From the couple’s Key West residence, Tillman had transported the boat with the intention of selling it at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show.
McGillis disclosed her sexual orientation as a lesbian in a 2009 SheWired interview. She and Melanie Leis, a sales executive from Philadelphia, got married in 2010. They had first connected in 2000 while Leis worked as a bartender at Key West, Florida’s Caribbean Bar Grill & Brewery, which McGillis and her then-husband operated. The following year, they called it quits.
When McGillis and Leis lived together in Collingswood, New Jersey, McGillis worked full-time as a rehabilitation counselor at Seabrook House Drug Alcohol Rehab Center.
At the moment, McGillis resides in Hendersonville, North Carolina. In Asheville, North Carolina, she has been an acting instructor at the New York Studio for Stage and Screen (NYS3) since 2013.
2016 home invasion
On June 17, 2016, McGillis was attacked by a woman who broke into her home, leaving her with scratches and bruises. She claimed that in order to protect herself, she applied for a concealed carry permit in response to this incident and others she had previously encountered. Laurence Marie Dorn, 38, was accused of second-degree burglary, misdemeanor larceny, misdemeanor stalking, assault and battery, and interference with emergency communication after the event. Later, Dorn was found guilty of misdemeanor breaking and entering and received a probationary sentence.
Kelly McGillis Trivia
is a licensed professional counselor that specializes in substance abuse counseling.
wanted to portray the district attorney “Kathryn Murphy” in the 1988 film The Accused because she and her roommate had been raped and attacked in their flat in 1982 by two guys.
proprietor of Key West, Florida’s Kelly’s Caribbean Bar, Grill, and Brewery restaurant.
Kelly McGillis, who starred in her first film, Reuben Reuben, which was nominated for an Oscar, was forced to take a job waiting tables.
was allegedly sacked from the 1984 movie Bachelor Party because the producers didn’t think she was attractive or seductive enough.
tried out for the 1992 film Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell role.
When Ms. McGillis returned home on Friday, June 17, 2016, she discovered Laurence Marie Dorn, a woman, had broken into her home. McGillis was attacked by Dorn. A second degree burglary charge, misdemeanor theft, misdemeanor stalking, assault and battery, and interfering with emergency communications were brought against Dorn after she was taken into custody by Henderson County Deputies. Dorn received an 18-month probationary sentence after being convicted guilty of misdemeanor breaking and entering in May 2017.
On May 24, 1990, at the age of 32, she gave birth to her first child, a girl named Kelsey Lauren Tillman. Fred Tillman, her second husband, is the child’s father.
on April 10, 1993, at the age of 35, gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Sonora Ashley. Fred Tillman, her second husband, is the child’s father.
In 2000, while McGillis was still married to her second husband Fred Tillman, she met Melanie Leis, her old partner.
claimed to be an overweight, lonely teenager.
According to an interview on the website shewired, Kelly McGillis verified long-standing allegations that she is a lesbian in April 2009.
She is descended from Scots-Irish (Northern Irish), Welsh, English, and German people.
Currently resides in Henderson County, North Carolina, as of June 2016.
Judge Robert T. Zane III conducted Kelly McGillis and Melanie Leis’ civil union in Collingswood, New Jersey, on September 15, 2010, according to an article published in the New York Times. Melanie Leis works in sales.
portraying “Mrs. Robinson” on stage with the national touring production of “The Graduate.”
Daughter of Donald, a general practitioner of medicine, and Joan, a homemaker.
studied at Juilliard and the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts.
Taking “Frankie & Johnny in the Clair De Lune” on a UK tour with Rolf Saxon.
Sisters: Kathleen (born August 1961) and Karen (born July 1959).
Presently employed on Broadway in The Graduate as Mrs. Robinson.
She was twice passed over for the Madame de Tourvel role. Originally, American actresses Glenn Close and Kevin Spacey starred in the stage drama “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” in 1987. They were supposed to replace the highly regarded English ensemble, but the show’s producers were afraid that the cast change would result in a weak box office performance. (This was before to Close and Spacey being well-known figures.) The second instance occurred in the 1988 movie Dangerous Liaisons (1988), when director Stephen Frears was persuaded by movie critic Pauline Kael to replace McGillis with Michelle Pfeiffer, who was nominated for an Academy Award, and Close, who was cast this time around due to her breakthrough performance in Fatal Attraction (1987).
Listed in John Willis’ Screen World, Vol. 36, Collingswood, New Jersey, as one of the twelve “Promising New Actors of 1984”
born on March 47, PM (PDT).
Who is Kelly McGillis’ spouse?
She is an American actress most recognized for her role as Top Gun’s Charlotte Blackwood. She has also appeared in Stake Land and The Accused.
Does Kelly McGillis have children?
Sure. Sonora and Kelsey Tillman are the actress’s two children from her previous marriage to Fred Tillman. On May 24, 1990, her first daughter Kelsey was born, and on April 10, 1993, she received her second daughter Sonora.
Is Kelly McGillis gay?
Sure. The actress from Top Gun came out as homosexual in 2009 after saying she was over her attraction in men in an interview with SheWired. In addition, Kelly told Philadelphia Gay News that she was drawn to girls in high school and that, as a result of her actions, her parents had expelled her from the house when she was seventeen.
Is Kelly McGillis married now?
Who is the wife of Kelly McGillis? The actress hasn’t been married or partnered since splitting up with her ex-partner Melanie Leis.
