McGillis living simple life

COLLINGSWOOD, N.J. -- Moviegoers of a certain age remember Kelly McGillis as Rachel, the Amish widow of "Witness" (1985), a milk-fed madonna who looks as though she stepped out of a Vermeer and into Lancaster County, Pa. Or as Charlie, the hot flight instructor to fighter pilots in "Top Gun" (1986). Or as Kathryn, brainy assistant D.A. in "The Accused" (1988).

One of the screen's most sought-after leading ladies, McGillis then flew off the Hollywood radar. Intentionally. She married, had two daughters, sailed across the Atlantic, divorced, thrived in regional theater and confronted her addiction issues.

Last year, she matter-of-factly told a reporter that she is a lesbian. Recently, she collected an Artistic Achievement award from the gay and lesbian film festival, QFest. Now 53, McGillis lives on a leafy street in this Philadelphia suburb.

Fresh from weeding the garden of her 1920s kit house, McGillis wears her years, and face, proudly.

The simply furnished house is like its owner. No photos of famous friends. No trophy mantel. Franklin, her white cat, and Walter, a marmalade, find their light and meditate.

"My life is pretty simple," McGillis says. "I live my life in loving service. I go to the prison in Camden (N.J.), talk to women there about addiction and recovery."

McGillis has not turned her back on the stage and screen. She's working on TV and film projects ("The L Word," "Stakeland"). She taught acting in the years she lived in Mohnton, Pa., 2001-08.

"I'm paying dues I never paid before," McGillis observes of her modestly scaled gigs. In 1983, she went from Juilliard to star billing. "I'm not reinventing myself," she says. "I'm reintroducing myself."

Kelly Ann McGillis was raised in upscale Newport Beach, Calif. Her parents were "very yacht-y." McGillis was a young teen when she hit her height of 5-foot-10. "At 13, I thought I was 20." At one point, she tipped the scales at 200 pounds. "I was rebellious, strong-willed, driven."

Practicing tough love, her parents asked their daughter to leave a few years later.

She had dreams of the New York theater. She waited tables, heard about the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. Figuring that cracking Broadway would be easier with Juilliard as a base, she took a two-year degree at PCPA and wed Boyd Black in 1979. They divorced in 1981, by which time she was at Juilliard.

"I loved Juilliard. I was a leading lady in an ingenue's body. My goal was to be a N.Y. theater actress," she says. "It never crossed my mind that movies were a possibility," says McGillis. "By movie standards, I am a big girl."

But screenwriter Philip Epstein ("Casablanca") wanted her for "Reuben, Reuben," an indie film about a boozy poet who finds his muse in a peaches-and-cream undergraduate.

Right before she shot "Reuben, Reuben," two intruders raped her in her apartment. "At the time, I don't think I was capable of articulating how I felt. I thought I must have done something to make it happen." She self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. "I couldn't afford a therapist. I carried (the anger) for a long time."

When "Reuben, Reuben" was released, critics hailed her radiance and stillness, calling her a screen natural. Though she assumed she'd never get another film offer, she won a role in the Tom Hanks comedy "Bachelor Party," but was booted, told she wasn't sexy enough. She returned to waiting tables. Then director Peter Weir and actor Harrison Ford dropped in to ask her interest in the one about the Philly cop hiding in Amish country. "Had I done 'Bachelor Party,' I wouldn't have been available to do 'Witness.' God does work in mysterious ways."

McGillis made seven movies from 1984-89. She liked working with Ford ("nice, quiet, aloof"), Viggo Mortensen ("intelligent, kind") and Weir ("creative, fatherly").

From the slow buggy rides of "Witness" to the supersonic planes of "Top Gun," where she and Meg Ryan were the only women in the squadron of macho men: "Making the movie was like summer camp. I had a blast. Tom (Cruise) was generous, kind, loving."

" 'The Accused' found me," she says of the role in which her character aids rape victim Jodie Foster bring charges against bystanders who failed to intervene. "I was offered a choice of either lead, and I did the lawyer because I didn't want to do the victim part. Felt that wouldn't be acting; that would be therapy."

The movie that killed the love for making movies was Abel Ferrara's "The Cat Chaser" (1989). "It was the most hateful experience of my life." Recently married to Fred Tillman, she thought, "If this is what acting is going to be, I won't do it."

She and Tillman had Kelsey, the first of two daughters, followed by Sonora. "I wanted to be a mom." It took a couple of plays to remind McGillis that she did love acting.

"With motherhood, my life became less self-centered," she says. McGillis started doing TV. In 2001, her marriage on the rocks, McGillis relocated from Key West, Fla., to Mohnton, with her daughters. There she faced her addiction and her sexual preference. Still, she did not come out until last year.

"I believed that coming out would limit the roles I would get. ... Yes, I had skirted the issue."

Mostly, McGillis thinks private lives are private: "Don't want to know everything about everybody, do you?"