Usually, when an actress embarks on a role she has to draw on her imagination to make the character come to life but for this actress, having gone through the experience of assault and rape in real life her roles came right from the heart.

Kelly McGillis was born in Newport Beach, California on July 9^th 1957 and claims to have been a lonely, overweight adolescent who found an escape from her misery through acting.

Kelly’s first encounter with the performing arts came when she studied at the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts and Julliard. While training at Pacific she made an impressive film debut as the lady friend of drunken poet Tom Conti in the 1983 movie Reuben, Reuben.

In 1971 McGillis had married Boyd Black but the marriage was short lived and the couple divorced in 1981. But within eight years Kelly had met and married her second husband, Fred Tillman with whom she had two daughters, Kelsey and Sonora.

Landing the role of Rachel in Witness saw McGillis playing opposite Harrison Ford and prior to the start of filming she spent a considerable amount of time with an Amish family to prepare for her the part in which she played a young Amish widow.

1986 was the year that really brought McGillis to the fore when she landed the role of Charlotte 'Charlie' Blackwood in Top Gun with Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer, Tom Skerritt, Tim Robbins, and a young Meg Ryan. McGillis sent the heart’s of just about every man on the planet racing.

With the role of a defending attorney in the 1988 movie The Accused, the actress drew on her own experience as a real rape victim after she and her friend were assaulted and raped in their home by the escaped rapist Leroy Johnson. Defending Jodie Foster, in the role of Sarah Tobias, McGillis decided to tell her own story during the making of the movie and became a militant advocate for assault victim' rights.

In 1992 Kelly was selected for the role of Claire Hodgson Ruth in the 1992 movie The Babe the second wife of famous baseball player Babe Ruth played by John Goodman.

Kelly received a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Witness.

The Monkey Mask in 2000 saw Kelly starring opposite Abbie Cornish in the crime drama film based on the verse novel of the same name by Dorothy Porter.

2004 saw McGillis taking her skills to the stage when she was cast in the role of Mrs Robinson in the stage play of the movie, The Graduate which toured the United States.

After divorcing her second husband in 2002 Kelly remains single and now lives in Key West, Florida and owns a restaurant in called Kelly's, that she and her ex-husband founded.

ABB