Kelly McGillis: 'I Have a Very Quiet, Little Normal Life, and I Love It'

The Top Gun star returns to acting but on her own terms

Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty

After a hiatus that lasted a decade, Kelly McGillis has returned to acting. And if her trajectory this time isn’t as stratospheric as her Top Gun days, that’s just fine with her.

“It’s like starting over because I’ve aged. I’ve changed,” the actress, 56, tells Smashing Interviews magazine. “I have to reintroduce myself to people, so to speak. I don’t want to try to recreate what kind of career I had before.”

She adds: “I don’t want to do plastic surgery. I don’t want to try to look younger than what I am. I really want to do character roles.”

She has found several of those thanks to director Jim Mickle, who cast her in 2010’s Stake Land as well as the current horror-drama hybrid We Are What We Are.

It’s been a fruitful partnership, especially since McGillis – who came out as a lesbian in 2009 and entered into a civil union with partner Melanie Leis in 2010 – no longer wants to live near New York or Los Angeles, where she could get more acting work.

“I’m really happy where I live,” says McGillis, who has settled in Asheville, N.C. “I really feel spiritually fed by living in the country. I tried to move closer to Philadelphia so I could get to New York easier. I lived in the suburbs, and I just did not like it, not one bit.”

She adds: “I’m exceedingly happy. I have a very quiet, little normal life, and I love it.”

It’s quite the change from the 1980s, when roles in Witness and Top Gun made her famous. “I certainly had no anonymity left whatsoever,” she says. “If I walked into a restaurant, everybody knew who I was. That was really overwhelming I never wanted that kind of recognition. I just wanted to be able to act. That was really difficult for me. It was very scary.”

“I wasn’t prepared for that psychologically. I don’t know how one would prepare for that. I had a tough time dealing with being a household name.”