Tragic story of Top Gun star Kelly McGillis as she reveals ‘what ruined my life’

Kelly McGillis became a megastar by playing the flight instructor who falls for Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

Since her breakout role as Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Blackwood in the 1986 Hollywood blockbuster she has enjoyed a modest acting career. While never quite reached the dizzying heights of her bursting onto the silver screen she has remained in the public eye.

The actress, who turns 67 today (July 9), engaged in a number of high profile relationships during her hey day, including Warren Beatty and Jodie Foster. Despite her meteoric rise in front of the camera, behind the lens was a woman haunted by events in her life.

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From muggings to sexual assault and problem’s with alcohol, Kelly’s on-screen choices were sometimes influenced by what happened in her personal life.

It was before she’d even appeared on Top Gun when she experienced the first couple of incidents.

Two years after Kelly moved from Newport Beach, California, to New York to study acting at Julliard she was mugged at gun point.

At the time she shrugged it off as a Big Apple initiation but in 1982 two men forced their way into her apartment and raped her at knifepoint. Speaking to People magazine about the ordeal in 1988 she described how one of her assailants held a knife to her right eye, while the other got on top of her.

“They kept switching and telling me they were going to beat me until I was dead,” she said.

Fortunately, a person heard her cries and alerted the police, who in turn banged on the door and scared the attackers off. Kelly later identified them, and the main attacker was locked up for three years.

But the incident hung over her and everything she did. She confessed that she couldn’t handle the New York subway without feeling sick, and that if it wasn’t for the support of her classmates and instructors at Juilliard, she might have taken her own life.

Already married and divorced by the time of the rape, she had been living with a woman at the time of the attack and believed it was a punishment for being gay.

She drank too much and admitted to People: “I would put myself in demeaning relationships with men. It made me feel horrible, but it seemed to be what I deserved.”

With the intention of finding closure from her past, she accepted the opportunity to play the prosecutor in the critically acclaimed 1988 rape drama The Accused, which featured Jodie Foster.

Another doomed marriage followed, this time to yacht salesman Fred Tillman in 1989.

The pair were in love, had two daughters, but cracks started to appear as Kelly admitted to the New York Times: “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.”

Then right after Kelly had their second daughter, her husband got arrested for trying to pay for sex from a prostitute who was actually a policewoman in disguise.

By then, the couple had already moved to Key West, Florida, and established a bar called Kelly’s. It was at this bar that she met bartender Melanie Leis.

But despite hitting it off, the pair became self destructive. “We were partners in crime and were both drinking and abusing drugs,” said Leis.

After divorcing Tillman in 2002, McGillis got sober and left Hollywood to raise her daughters as a single mother with Leis in rural Pennsylvania.

The couple eventually relocated to New Jersey, where the actress found work as a counsellor at a rehab centre helping alcoholics and drug addicts. Additionally, she dedicated her time as a volunteer visitor at a prison.

Kelly did rejoin the entertainment industry in 2008, when she took a role in lesbian TV drama The L Word. A year later she officially came out in an interview with SheWired.com, where she admitted she was “done with the man thing”.

Kelly and Leis had a civil union in 2010, but parted company in 2011. In 2016 Kelly was attacked in her own home in North Carolina by a complete stranger, which led to Kelly carrying a gun.

More recently her glaring omission from the sequel to the film that set her star soaring raised eyebrows.

While Kelly said she believes it was because of her lack of willingness to go under the knife, or dye her grey hair back to blonde, Top Gun director Joseph Kosinski said he just wanted to take the film in a different direction with different characters.

Speaking about changing her look, Kelly told Entertainment Tonight: “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.”

For emotional support, you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org, visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the website at www.samaritans.org

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk