WTH Happened to Kelly McGillis’s career?

She seemed nothing like Kathleen Turner

The gossip about her and Whitney Houston and Jodie Foster probably didn't help

She probably saw the writing on the wall that she'd be shoehorned into a lot of sex symbol/girlfriend roles and had no interest in doing that until she aged into Hollywood invisibility.

That's what happens when you lezz it up.

Rape? The one in the Accused?

The wiki OP linked to cites an interview in which she explained why she walked away. She didn't provide much detail and wouldn't name the director she clashed with, but the reporter accurately notes that it must have been Abel Ferrara. I've not found any subsequent interviews in which she expanded on that. An intrepid reporter should try digging a little deeper now.

[quote]"It was the most hateful experience of my life," she remembers. "And I said, if this is what acting is going to be, I will not do it. On the last day of shooting, I said, 'Are you done with me?' He said, 'Yeah'. I walked in my trailer and shaved my head. I said, 'Screw you, I never want to act again.' I got on a boat in the Caribbean and stayed for six months, in limbo. Then I got pregnant, and things changed. It took me six months of soul-searching, and nine months of pregnancy, and a couple of plays, to say, 'I do love acting. I just don't want to work with assholes any more.'"

Why Did Kelly McGillis's Career Go Into The Shitter?

It went RIGHT DOWN THE SHITTER!

Abel is a great director, Kelly was an interchangeable actress. Better than some of her contemporaries but by no means notably talented.

Looking into it a bit more, production of that Ferrara film sounds like a major shit show. There's a lot of interesting info here, including a photo of McGillis with her very gay post-buzz-cut hair.

She probably didn't suck Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus, and Harvey Weinstein's dongs, unlike some actresses.

Being good at directing films doesn't mean you can't be a total asshole.

Neither does making them redeem assholery.

Is she in good health these days? Does she work a lot other than teaching? It would be strange to see her beside Cruise who has stayed in shape, had good work done, and is still doing Top Gun movies with $150M opening weekends.

She likes the lady ham.

R10 I enjoyed that, thank you.

This: “So then he looks at me and says, “Just tell me one thing. Which one of those guys was Panzer and which was Davis?” Which I thought was pretty funny, considering he took like a half a million from them.”

And this:

“We had the meeting with the producers later that day, and it was in her contract that there was full-frontal nudity. I think she got a million bucks, a little more than Weller. And she says, “Uh, guys, the first thing I wanna know is: what exactly is full-frontal nudity?” And then she says, to Panzer, “You’re the producer, right? Well I’m having my period, and I don’t have any tampons. Go get me some!” She was awesome. I loved that chick and she was great in the movie.”

And I think Melanie Griffith did this during Bonfire of the Vanities, too:

“We did prep in Miami and then closed down, I think, for two weeks over Christmas. And during the Christmas break, Kelly had a tit job done. She had a perfectly nice body before Christmas and she came back with ginormous tits. And Abel and I just looked at each other, you know, “What are we gonna do?!”

I absolutely love her.. She is a great actress who did some wonderful films. "Witness" is one of my favorite movies of all time. "The Accused" and "Top Gun" are veritable classics. I also really loved her in the under-seen noir "The House on Carroll Street" with Jeff Daniels. She really had a classic Hollywood elegance about her, almost a mix between Lauren Bacall and Faye Dunaway (this really comes through in "The House on Carrol Street", which is set in the 1950s).

I think ultimately she just wasn't the type who was capable of/interested in playing the Hollywood game. If you listen to interviews with her, while she is extremely articulate (probably that Juilliard training), she also seems very down-to-earth and unpretentious.

She has said that she put her career on the back burner to focus on raising her children, and it seems that her family life was more important to her than acting. If I remember right, she met her first girlfriend while she and her husband were managing the restaurant they owned in Florida in the '90s.

OP Kelly at her dyke-iest is still exponentially more femme than Kathleen Turner could ever dream of being.

I was living in Lancaster PA when they were filming Witness. Kelly was frequently seen at the local gay bar with her girlfriend.

Kelly's lesbian rumors date back to at least the early '80s. The roommate who was attacked with her in the home invasion/sexual assault was reportedly her then-partner.

Needless to say, she didnt age well.

[Quote] ANTHONY REDMAN: I asked Peter Davis, “How far do you want me to go with this rape scene?” And he said, “I want you to go all the way. Really make it graphic.” So I did that. In fact, I made it longer than it could’ve been. When Peter saw that, he said, “My God! I know I told you to go all the way, but Jesus! I mean, this is overkill!” He thought it was demeaning to women and that sort of thing, and you know, [I thought it was] not nearly enough! I put an extra beat in there where Milián starts with [the gun on] her pussy, then it goes into her mouth and then he drags it down again to her pussy, that kind of thing. That last beat wasn’t supposed to be there. I just kind of milked it as best I could, with the material I had. I’m a child of exploitation films. Seeing it now, I probably would have done even more. It made me laugh. I said, “If the feminists see this, they’re gonna hang me in Times Square, you know, by my nuts, at high noon.”

What a fucking creep.

Kelly was very attractive back in the day . Very sultry and vulnerable in Witness. She played the mom of Leo Decaprio’s life long friend, Lucas haas

I saw Haas' brother on Grindr the other day.

She looked like Alicia Bridges here.

Bump

[Quote] JIM BORRELLI: I question whether one incident can cause someone to drop an entire career. There’s other factors involved in her psychology. Look at the source. It doesn’t appear as if this woman was very stable. It sounds like Abel and those guys were picking up the check on something that was simmering for a long time.

Another creep.

In contrast:

[Quote] JESSE LONG, SCRIPT SUPERVISOR: She had a right to be upset. The stand-in for her in the lovemaking scene, they didn’t treat her right. They were handsy. They were, like, “Oh, we’re rehearsing, we’re rehearsing.” It embarrassed me. Kelly walked in and saw that. It was amazing to me how she could come on set, be that character, even though she disliked the person she was acting with.

[Quote] KELLY McGILLIS: I go in to work one day and I’m supposed to be doing a nude scene, and unnamed people had hired a stripper from a club in Miami as my body stand-in. I walk into the room and this girl is on all fours with her top down, and every male crew member is telling her what Kelly would be doing, and they’re feeling her breasts. It was terrible.

R28, I totally believe this . Damm !

Abel talking out from both sides of his mouth:

[Quote] I’m sure her fucking agent or her lawyer told her she had to do [the scene]. I would never tell anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. I would never let anyone bully an actor into doing anything. Never.

[Quote] Now, then and since the day Hollywood started, if you take money from a producer, as an actor, you better do what the fuck is in that script, or give the money back. And don’t expect to ever work again.

Abel, again:

[Quote] {As for the stripper fondling allegations}, what is Kelly, the judge and jury of on-set relationships? I’m sure the guy wasn’t raping her. What if it was the stripper’s boyfriend? Come on, this is all bullshit.

What a prince.

And what the fuck does this have to do with anything:

[Quote] ANTHONY RICHMOND: I think she realized [she was a lesbian] before she was married, frankly.

A somewhat Odd Couple.

[Quote] JIM BORRELLI: I knew Charlie Durning as an actor and a buddy. I used to run around and drink with him. He was happy [on that set]. That was my favorite stuff, the scenes with Charlie, especially the assassination in the bathroom. That’s pure Charlie, because he was second wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He told me a story that he beat a German soldier’s head flat with a rock, in mano a mano combat. He’s got shrapnel all over his body. Fifty years later, he was still digging out pieces of shrapnel showing up in his legs. He was a real tough guy.

A sick and boring life.

[Quote] PETER WELLER: Milián went through his whole Actor’s Studio shtick.

That sounds a bit rich, coming from Weller.

R33 definitely an odd pairing. He is not attractive, although I am assuming that didn't really matter to her. She looks a bit like Joanna Cassidy in that picture. Kelly always looked quite glamorous, especially when she had her long hair. There is something interesting-looking about her that I can't really put my finger on.

Even in her heyday she looked dykey as can be. Big dykeface at R10.

I don’t tend to believe whatever criticism she’s making about how every male she ever worked with was evil. That’s classic lesbian victim personality.

As for her career, she was never very sexy and not a good actress (sort of wooden). Then she aged like milk. And I suspect she isn’t the easiest person to work with.

Her lack of sexiness makes it surprising she had a career in the first place. Though in the ‘80s there was a trend for tall, big-boned women.

She was stunning in "Reuben, Reuben"

[Quote] she was never very sexy

Many would disagree.

I could always tell she was a lesbian. Always.

She looks so cute here, like she's promoting a teen pop record she cut.

Her hair was spectacular.