Kelly McGillis

Kelly McGillis is an American actress born on July 9, 1957 in Newport Beach, California. He became known in the mid-1980s for the films Witness and Top Gun.

He began his acting training at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, then continued at the Juilliard School in New York, graduating from there in 1983.

Cinema career

He made his breakthrough with 1985's Witness. In Peter Weir's film, she played Rachel Lapp, an Amish widow who comes under police protection with her son after witnessing a murder; this role earned him Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. A year later, she reached a much wider audience with her role as Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood, the instructor of the pilot played by Tom Cruise, in Top Gun.

In 1988, she played prosecutor Kathryn Murphy opposite Jodie Foster in The Accused. Appearing less frequently in the 1990s, McGillis guest-starred on television such as The Outer Limits and appeared in the 1994 film North. He started working regularly again from the mid-2000s: he starred in The L Word, followed by independent horror films such as Stake Land (2010), The Innkeepers (2011) and We Are What We Are (2013).

McGillis is among the well-known faces of the cinema of that period, especially with his roles in two major productions of the eighties.