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Years of struggle,
coming out mark
Kelly McGillis' life
Globe-nominated 'Top Gun' actress talks marriage, divorces,
civil unions
by Jen Colletta :: Philadelphia Gay News
AfTlBI
26 qnotes Oct. 30-Nov. 12.2O10
Though one person's coming out story cer
tainly doesn't convey the history of the LGBT
rights movement, it is through telling these
accounts that the community makes its own
history. This is Kelly McGillis’ story.
Despite two failed marriages, a years-
iong battle with substance abuse and a
. retreat from the career that once earned her
a Golden Globe nomination, Kelly McGillis
doesn't shy awayfrom her past.
"I don't think I'm any more dysfunctional
or crazy than anybody else is. I'm just more
willing to talk about it," said the 53-year-old
out actor.
McGillis, star of such films as "Top Gun,"
"Witness" and "The Accused," said she's still
getting used to the relatively quiet life she and
partner Melanie Leis share in Collingswood,
N.J. — a vast departure from the years of
struggles she endured.
A native of Thousand Oaks, Calif., McGillis
was a self-described tomboy as a kid. The
oldest of three girls, she was close with her
father, a physician, frequently going sailing
with him and accompanying him on his house
calls.
When she hit her teenage years, however,
McGillis said her relationship with her parents
began to unravel.
"I was an incredibly rebellious teenager,"
she said. "I thought I should be 18 and have all
the privileges of 18 when I was 13.1 was just
out of control."
McGillis' behavior became too much
for her parents and, when she was 17, they
kicked her out of the house—which, in ret
rospect, was "the best thing they could have
ever done for me."
McGillis enrolled in the Pacific
Conservatory of Performing Arts in Santa
Maria and later transferred to Juilliard.
Before heading east, McGillis married,
although not for the usual reasons.
"I really wanted my parents to love me,"
she said. "They chucked me out of the house
at 17 and said, 'We don't want to see you
anymore,' so I thought that to win their ap
proval back, [getting marriedl was the right
thing to do."’
.Once she was accepted to Juilliard, how
ever, she knew the marriage couldn't survive
the school's demanding schedule.
The split was amicable, and McGillis said
hertime in New York opened her eyes to her
own sexuality, which she had struggled with
for years.
"I was very attractedLto girls in high
school, and that horrified me because I just
knew that wasn't right. That's what I told
myself," she said. "Mind you, ray family never
ever talked about sex — not sex, not even
menstruation—they were all taboo subjects
that you just didn’t talk about. So it was a very,
very scary and confusing time for me."
McGillis began dating a woman and
the two moved into an apartment together;
however, their relationship crumbled after
they were sexually assaulted together by a
home intruder.
"I never got over that," she said. "When
you're the victim of a violent crime like that.
I think it's normal to think. What did I do to
deserve this? And the story that I came up
with that I could cope with was that I was
being punished because I liked girls, because
I'm gay."
McGillis went on to date several men be
fore she decided she wanted the stability and
safety of a husband and children, and married
her second husband, Fred Tillman.
"I met Fred, and I thought Fred will protect
me. Nobody will ever hurt me again. And that
only worked for so long because the fact Ts
that I wasn't being true to who I was and what
I am. You can only live a lie for so long without
absolutely destroying yourself. And that's
what I did."
McGillis had two daughters with Tillman,
but continued to spiral downward into drug
and alcohol dependence, what she called a
"coping mechanism for all the shit I created
in my life."
Her addictions became so consuming that
she eventually stepped out of the film industry
and went into rehab.
Tillman was awarded custody of their
children, which she now says was deserved,
and after she emerged from rehab, McGillis
began the long process of piecing her life
back together.
Starting over
'When I got out, I had nowhere to go, and
I found myself at a halfway house in Mohnton,
Pa., and I thought OK, I'm just going to stay
here and learn howto not drink and not do
drugs. I've never scored drugs here, and I
don't know anybody who does drugs here. So
this is where I'm going to stay and learn how
to get sober."
After nine months in the small town near
Reading, McGillis was reunited with her chil
dren and worked to rebuild the relationships
that had deteriorated, a process that put her
film career on hold.
"That's one of the main reasons I didn't
work," she said. "I had an agent who kept
calling, and we finally got in an argument, and
I had to tell him, 'You don't seem to under
stand. I have to do this for my children and
for myself. I have to be the best parent I know
how to be.'And that's what I did."
McGillis and her daughters lived in
Pennsylvania from 2001-08, and although the
girls accepted her relationship with Leis, a for
mer employee of a restaurant she and Tillman
owned, she said she initially didn't address the
issue with them.
"I did what my parents did and just didn't
talk about it, didn’t talk about the elephant in
the.room. I had so much shame," she said.
"For the longest time, when Mel and I would
be out, I said, 'You can’t possibly touch me
in public. You just can't do that' It embar
rassed me."
Coming out
McGillis said her sobriety, however,
eventually empowered her to accept her own
sexuality and share her life with her children.
While she didn't fully embrace her own
identity until she was in her 40s, she said