Kelly McGillis, best remembered for her starring roles in the movies "Witness," "The Accused" and "Top Gun," will stop by Ephrata Performing Arts Center April 19 for an Actors Studio-style conversation with retired Sunday News entertainment editor and EPAC board member Jim Ruth.
A Golden Globe nominee for her portrayal of Amish woman Rachel Lapp opposite Harrison Ford's Detective John Book in "Witness," McGillis has lived in Berks County with her two teenage daughters for the past seven years. She was invited to appear at EPAC by a former board member as a fundraiser. Tickets for the event cost $25.
The format, Ruth said, will be similar to the master class he conducted with actor Richard Thomas at Millersville University's Rafters Theatre last year: informal, informational and just a touch inspirational when it comes to life in the theater.
"I've pretty much done everything I ever wanted to do," said McGillis, 50, during a recent telephone interview from her home studio in Mohnton. "My most important job right now is being a full-time single parent to Sonora [14] and Kelsey [17]."
McGillis agreed to come to EPAC in part because she, too, once plied her trade at the local level.
"I got my start at the community theater in Newport Beach [Calif.]. I'm very supportive of small, local theaters. They have real value."
Born and raised in Newport Beach, McGillis came east at the age of 21 to study drama at the Juilliard School in New York. At 25, she had her breakout movie debut opposite Tom Conti in "Reuben, Reuben" (1983). After star-making turns opposite Ford in "Witness" and Tom Cruise in "Top Gun," she played the district attorney opposite Jodie Foster's rape victim in "The Accused."
Since that trio of high-profile films in the 1980s, McGillis has kept a much lower profile, doing a half dozen plays with Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., in the 1990s, and starring in regional productions of "Night of the Iguana" and "Hedda Gabler." She's also done many straight-to-video and TV movie roles in films such as "The Perfect Prey" (1998), "Black Widower" (2006) and Roger Corman's "Supergator" (2007).
In 2004, McGillis played Mrs. Robinson in a national tour of "The Graduate." She also appeared in two episodes of Showtime's controversial lesbian drama "The L Word" last year, playing a military lawyer handling a case of "don't ask, don't tell."
As for the question of "where is she now," McGillis laughed and said she's just been picking up dog poop. In addition to her children, McGillis lives with a Weimaraner, a Chihuahua, a Welsh corgi, a cat and two ferrets. Despite being a California girl, she lives in Pennsylvania because, she said, "fate brought me here, and I really like it.
"I'm very unglamorous, but never bored," McGillis said of her life today. "I never sit and do nothing. I have so many different interests: painting, knitting, studying the Bible. I grew up an atheist, but I've been a member of a local Lutheran church for the past six years. I don't see myself as attached to a specific religious faith. I'm attached to God. I want to go where I'm being led. I think that means I'll be going to seminary."
That doesn't mean, however, that she's ready to give up acting.
"It's my passion," she said. "It gives you the opportunity to constantly change and experience things you'd never have a chance to experience any other way."
Hitting the Big 5-0 last year helped her put things into perspective. She experienced "a brief moment when I thought, [wow], I'm old. I'm no longer a kid. But being more mature also means I don't give two hoots what people think of me, and that's incredibly freeing."
"Witness: Kelly McGillis Live!" begins at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 19, at Ephrata Performing Arts Center in Tom Grater Memorial Park. For ticket information, call 733-7966 or visit ephrataperformingartscenter.com.
Marty Crisp is staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is mcrisp@lnpnews.com.
