In fact McGillis heard other victims talking about their experience during the making of the film and “thought that my not talking about my own experience was the most cowardly act of my life”. She first spoke publicly about it in 1987 while promoting The Accused, a film where Jodie Foster played a rape victim and McGillis was the prosecutor going after her attackers.Ĭynics accused her of opening up for publicity, though the years of work she has done since with rape advocacy groups belies that notion.
In 1982, McGillis had been raped at home by two men, and testified against one of them at trial (the other was never convicted). That lack of self-belief hid an even greater trauma. But she was determined to finish Julliard: having dropped out of her Californian high school to pursue acting, she already felt a lingering sense of being “inarticulate and stupid and unintelligent”. She needed basic filmmaking terms explained in her first days on set, and endured the “hate stares” of other students during the week. Not allowed to miss classes, McGillis flew from New York to the northern California set at weekends and on holidays.
She was cast opposite Tom Conti in her first film, 1983’s Reuben Reuben, while she was still studying at Julliard. Yet McGillis’s Hollywood success always came loaded with self-doubt.
She could project a sort of old-school Hollywood glamour in jeans and a white shirt, but – not least because of her 5’10” stature – seemed entirely capable of standing up to any leading man who came her way.
There’s a wild contrast between her signature roles: the buttoned-up, carefully withdrawn mother in Witness and the fiery, intellectual and extremely confident Charlie in Top Gun.
Extraordinarily beautiful but in an unconventional, almost chameleonic way, McGillis was never comfortable as a leading lady or a sex symbol, and spent most of her film career feeling insecure in her own skin – and being made to doubt her own attractiveness by director after director. Her reaction to being written out of the sequel is typical of a star who always had an uneasy relationship with fame, and who, in recent years, has been busier teaching acting than being on-screen. McGillis, in contrast, is determined to remain one of Hollywood’s greatest “Whatever happened to.?” stories. But after over 10 years of fruitless attempts, she’s set to direct her first feature this year with the romance What Happens Later, starring opposite David Duchovny. Ryan all but retired from acting in the 2010s as opportunities disappeared and Hollywood’s sexism and ageism worked against her A-list status. She’d soon become synonymous with the romcom’s Golden Age in When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless In Seattle, before drawing harsh reviews with more dramatic fare (particularly the feminist erotic thriller In The Cut). Meg Ryan played the joyous, uninhibited Carole, wife of Goose, in Top Gun, and it made her a star. Not that McGillis is the only actress ejected from the new film. And that is not what that whole scene is about! But, to me, I’d much rather feel absolutely secure in my skin and who and what I am at my age as opposed to placing a value on all that other stuff.” “I mean, I’m old and I’m fat and I look age-appropriate for what my age is.
The sequel, finally arriving 36 years after the original, puts Cruise back in the pilot’s seat, finds a new storyline for Val Kilmer’s Iceman, and makes endless references to Anthony Edwards’s deceased Goose – a major presence in the movie thanks to his pilot son, played by Miles Teller.īut it may surprise you that one major character is missing in action: Cruise’s love interest Kelly McGillis, who played astrophysicist and civilian flight instructor Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood.īut one person unsurprised by the omission is McGillis herself. “They did not and nor do I think they would ever,” the actress, now 64, explained in 2019. Anyone with fond memories of Tom Cruise’s first foray into the danger zone will find many familiar faces in Top Gun: Maverick.