Revealed: How rape made Top Gun star Kelly McGillis walk away from Hollywood



The two women exchanged tearful vows in a simple civil ceremony in the unglamorous surroundings of the municipal courthouse. They pledged their love in front of just a handful of friends.

The wedding breakfast that followed was an equally unpretentious affair. It took place in a shabby Fifties-style diner, surrounded by workers on their lunch break.

The scene, in a small New Jersey town, was a world away from the glitz and ­glamour of Hollywood.



Leading lady: Kelly McGillis, pictured in the movie Witness, was the victim of a harrowing rape ordeal that she believed was her penitence for her sexuality

Yet no more than 20 years ago, one half of the couple celebrating this very modern gay union was feted as one of the film industry’s most successful and ­desirable leading ladies.

Kelly McGillis was the stunning blonde who won a legion of male admirers for her role as Tom Cruise’s love interest in Top Gun.

Today, she is barely recognisable as that same woman, preferring these days to dress in simple trouser suits and to sport tidy, short hair.

But after turning her back on Hollywood at the height of her fame, she has, at last, come clean about the double life she hid from the world for the best part of three decades.

Following last week’s marriage, 53-year-old Kelly has gone public for the first about her love for music company executive Melanie Leis, the on-off lover she has kept secret for the last nine years.

‘I have no secrets anymore, and in some ways it’s a relief,’ the twice-married Miss McGillis said this week after finally tying the knot with 42-year-old Miss Leis.

It was not always the case. Until the ceremony last month, attended by just 11 friends, Miss McGillis had steadfastly refused to ­acknowledge her relationship with the dark-haired Melanie.

New love: Exchanging rings with her partner Mel Leis

Their affair had long been the source of fevered rumour, with reports that the couple — who met when Kelly was still married to her second husband, millionaire Fred Tillman — were often to be seen walking hand-in-hand around the quiet town of Collingswood, where the actress has lived for the past two years.

Now, with extraordinary courage, the ­publicity-shy star has admitted she hid her sexuality after becoming convinced she was being ‘punished by God’ for being gay.

It led, she says, to her falling into two ­disastrous marriages, and numbing the guilt over her secret life with years of alcoholism and drug-taking.

So why has she finally chosen to own up to her relationship with Miss Leis, which for so long she insisted on shrouding in mystery?

'I drank a lot. I couldn’t eat. I twitched incessantly and I had nightmares. Because I was so afraid to go to sleep at night, I would drink’

The answer, say those who know her, is that Miss McGillis, who also starred in ­Hollywood hits such as Witness and The Accused, has finally come to terms with a harrowing rape ordeal that she believed was her penitence for her sexuality.

This week, in a rare interview, she said of the attack: ‘I created this story that I’m being punished for being gay.’

She also revealed, for the first time, that she had been with a lesbian lover in a New York apartment when the two women were subjected to the horrifying sexual assault by two men, who broke in and raped them at knifepoint.

The terrifying incident took place in February 1982, when Miss McGillis, the daughter of a wealthy California doctor and a midwife, was a drama student at the prestigious Juilliard School in Manhattan.

Two teenagers forced their way into her apartment on the city’s exclusive Central Park West, tied the two women up and threatened to beat them to death, before raping them as they hurled abusive insults. One of her attackers was 15-year-old Leroy Johnson, a teenage thug on the run from juvenile detention.

The identity of the other boy was never made public. Miss McGillis, then a budding actress aged 24, later ­identified Johnson from mug shots. He pleaded guilty and was jailed for three years.

But the actress’s ordeal — and the secret she kept even from her family that she had been with a female lover on that fateful night — was to light the fuse on an emotional time bomb.

By the time of the rape, the beautiful Kelly had already gone through a messy, short-lived first marriage to ­fellow student Boyd Black, and the attack set her quickly on the path to alcoholism.

She says now: ‘I drank a lot. I couldn’t eat. I twitched incessantly and I had nightmares. Because I was so afraid to go to sleep at night, I would drink.’



Eighties pin-up: Kelly won a legion of male fans playing Tom Cruise's love interest Charlie in Top Gun in 1986

Soon she was waking up after a heavy night with no recollection of where — or with whom — she had been.

But despite her personal problems, the actress’s stunning looks and talent won her a string of leading movie parts, including in the thriller Witness, in which she starred with Harrison Ford as an Amish widow.

In 1986, she landed the role for which she is best known — as flight ­instructor Charlie Blackwood in Top Gun, ­alongside heart-throb Tom Cruise. Despite the couple’s on-screen chemistry, she was, at a statuesque 5ft 10in, hardly ideal leading-lady material for the diminutive actor.

'My kids suffered a great deal because I was with Mell, and that bothered me a lot, and so I chose never to talk about it'

She spent the entire shoot ­stooping, slouching and bending so as not to appear taller than her screen lover. ‘I towered over him,’ she recalls. ‘I had really bad posture through the whole movie.’

Intriguingly, Miss McGillis, whose appearance in the film instantly made her the subject of a million male fantasies, now insists she had a fling with an unnamed male actor on the blockbuster, which also starred Val Kilmer and Tim Robbins.

But behind the scenes, her life was unravelling as she struggled to come to terms with the legacy of the rape and her unresolved sexuality.

It led her to turn down the role of a rape victim in the 1988 box office hit The Accused (the role finally went to Jodie Foster). Instead, she took on the part of the film’s tough prosecutor.

But with her Hollywood career at its zenith, Miss McGillis took a most unusual decision: she walked away to get married and start a family.

She wed Tillman, a rich yacht salesman, in 1989, spent six months sailing around the ­Caribbean, then moved to Key West, Florida, to open her own ­restaurant called Kelly’s.

Out and proud: The actress strolls anonymously along a Colchester street in jeans earlier this month



There she waited on tables and had two daughters by Tillman — Kelsey, now 20, and Sonora, 17. But behind the image of apparent domestic bless, the reality was not quite so perfect.

Just four days after Kelly gave birth to Sonora, Tillman, with whom she was running the restaurant, was arrested and fined $250 (£160) after he was caught propositioning an undercover policewoman posing as a prostitute. The marriage survived the scandal, but almost a decade later, in 2002, the couple divorced, and her ex bought her share of the restaurant.

Amid growing rumours back in Los Angeles that Miss McGillis’s life was unravelling spectacularly, the actress now admits she checked into a halfway house in a bid to beat her addictions.

And this week, she also confessed that the breakdown of her already shaky marriage coincided with her ­falling in love with Miss Leis, who was working at the time as a bartender in her restaurant.

‘We just started talking, and I was really taken with her,’ says Miss McGillis.

‘I was madly in love with Fred, but, deep down, I always knew it wasn’t the truth. I was never dishonest with him about my past, but it was a big struggle with me; a big struggle.’

Nor, it seems, has her relationship with Miss Leis — herself a recovering alcoholic — been plain sailing.

According to friends of the couple, it has long been a volatile affair, with the lovers splitting up several times during the almost ten years they have been together.

The relationship also came under strain, sources close to them in the U.S. say, because of the actress’s refusal to acknowledge publicly Miss Leis as her partner. ‘My kids have always been very understanding,’ Miss McGillis said this week. ‘But it was their friends, and their friends’ parents, that weren’t very accepting. My kids suffered a great deal because I was with Mell, and that bothered me a lot, and so I chose never to talk about it’.

Others might speculate that her reticence was also, in part, down to the fear that it could affect her chances of resurrecting her once-stellar career.

She even continued to deny her true sexuality after returning to screen acting and appearing as a lesbian poetry professor in the film The Monkey’s Mask, which was a box office flop, and as a gay army officer in Sapphic television drama The L Word, two years ago.

Then finally, in February last year, Miss McGillis gave an interview to SheWired.com, a lesbian website, and revealed Hollywood’s worst-kept secret when she blurted out: ‘I’m done with the man thing.’

She says of her decision to ‘out’ herself: ‘I really didn’t have to protect anyone by skirting the question, and I just decided to be absolutely honest.’

At the time, however, she and Miss Leis were temporarily estranged following yet another bust-up.

The actress said this week: ‘I always wanted to be with Mel, with all my heart and soul, but at a certain point, unless she was willing to do some work on herself, I wasn’t willing to stick around.’

Mcgillis married She married Fred Tillman in 1989. They divorced in 2002

Finally, at the end of last year, Melanie moved into the 1920s home in Collingswood, New Jersey, which the one-time star shares with her corgi dog Buddha and two cats. Her new-found domestic bliss also coincides with the man who raped her, Leroy Johnson, who is now 43, being back behind bars.

He is serving 50 years after being convicted of the rape of two young women in their New York apartment in frightening similar circumstances, forcing his way in and assaulting them at knifepoint.

Johnson, whose mother was a crack addict and whose father died of a ­heroin overdose, was being ­prescribed Viagra by the state to treat a medical condition, it emerged during his trial.

He was eventually caught by cold-case detectives who trapped him almost a decade after the rapes by using new DNA techniques. Before being sentenced, Johnson, who has served jail terms for two other sexual assaults, issued an apology to the actress for his attack on her.

Despite her experiences, Miss McGillis is a regular prison visitor, counselling women with drink and drug problems at Camden County jail near her New Jersey home.

And with her complicated love life now out in the open, she is once again returning to the spotlight.

She is about to appear with Olivia Newton-John, William ­Baldwin and former Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith in a new film, 1 A Minute, and will soon star as a vampire-slaying nun in horror film Stake Land.

Earlier this year, she toured Britain in the stage version of the Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer box office hit Frankie And Johnny.

However, she claims she is turned down for starring roles because of her refusal to have plastic surgery or dye her now-greying hair.

She says: ‘For a long, long time, I really tried to be something I’m not — and I have to say it ruined my life in a lot of ways.’

Now, it seems, the once-tortured Miss McGillis has finally found the happiness that has eluded her for so long.