Kelly McGillis

Once a star of Hollywood Kelly McGillis has had a difficult life leading to her retreating from the spotlight.

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Tom Cruise's former leading lady has endured a lifetime of insults, abuse, and 'hate stares'. No wonder she isn't in the sequel.

There had long been rumours about her sexuality (even during the making of Top Gun, when she was in fact dating Barry “Wolfman” Tubb) but McGillis waited until her daughters were older before formally coming out to website SheWired in 2009. In the midst of all this hype, I was suddenly a movie star – which I never set out to be – and it scared me.” But in 1996 the yacht burned, and the marriage followed in 2002. “There was a point after Top Gun when I felt I could have easily been wooed by the Hollywood megastar system – the lure of money and fame. But in the 1980s, nudity was the price of stardom. Director Peter Weir had searched high and low for a leading lady, and had heard good things about Ewa Fröling in Fanny & Alexander. But when he went to the cinema Bergman’s film was sold out so he bought a ticket to Reuben Reuben instead – and there she was. Early in her career, planned roles in a Broadway production of Garson Kanin’s comedy Peccadillo, and a big-screen sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes, something that she prepped for months, fell apart for reasons beyond her control. “There are so few opportunities to play really different women in films today,” she said at the time, “and the chance to be an unmodern woman in a modern film was too good to miss.” 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. She was cast opposite Tom Conti in her first film, 1983’s Reuben Reuben, while she was still studying at Julliard. Not allowed to miss classes, McGillis flew from New York to the northern California set at weekends and on holidays. 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.

Jennifer Connelly appears as Maverick's (Tom Cruise) love interest years after Kelly McGillis starred in 'Top Gun' — read more.

Instead, the pilot reconnects with Penny Benjamin ( Jennifer Connelly), who is referenced — but not seen — as the admiral’s daughter with a past with Maverick in the original film. Ryan wasn’t the only actor who wasn’t asked back for Top Gun: Maverick, however. In the second film, Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell returns to train younger Top Gun graduates — including his late best friend Goose’s son, Rooster ( Miles Teller) — for a special mission.

Top Gun 2 does not feature Kelly McGillis nor Meg Ryan - read on to find out how Charlie and Carole were written out of Top Gun Maverick.

To me, my relationships to other people became far more important than my relationship to fame." " "I didn't want every storyline to always be looking backwards. It wasn't like a major decision that I made to leave, it was just that other things became more important... When asked if anyone from Top Gun: Maverick reached out to her, she said: "Oh my God no they did not, and nor do I think they would ever. "I'm old, and I'm fat, and I look age-appropriate for what my age is. Set thirty years after the first film, Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell is back at Top Gun to whip a new bunch of young pilots into shape for a seemingly impossible mission.