Top Gun star Kelly McGillis at Malvern Theatres (From Ledbury Reporter)

Top Gun star Kelly McGillis at Malvern Theatres

10:09am Monday 18th January 2010

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MALVERN Theatres has hosted some big names over the years but it is not very often the theatre welcomes international Hollywood stars.

Actress Kelly McGillis will appear in a lavish new production of the classic love story set in 1980’s New York, Frankie and Johnny, alongside fellow American Rolf Saxon.

Kelly is known to millions for box office smashes including Witness with Harrison Ford, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination, The Accused with Jodie Foster and Top Gun with Tom Cruise.

Her many stage appearances include Sir Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hedda Gabbler on Broadway but Frankie and Johnny is her first play for theatre audiences in the UK. It opens in Malvern on February 1 for one week.

The actress spoke to the Gazette while in town for rehearsals.

“My agent told me Michael Lunney, the director, wanted me for the part and it’s a great play so I was delighted,” said Kelly, who has only recently returned to acting after an eight year break to bring up her two teenage daughters in Pennsylvania.

“I wanted them to have something resembling a normal life,” she said.

More than 20 years on from Top Gun the beautiful 51-year-old is “glad and grateful” to be remembered for her film roles.

But while many older actresses are chasing eternal youth Kelly is happy to be the age she is now.

“I’m older and I won’t compromise who I am. I’m not prepared to dye my hair and have plastic surgery. I still want to work as an actress, but as I am, older, a character actress perhaps,” she said.

She is looking forward to playing Frankie, a hard-boiled NY waitress, who finds herself in bed with Johnny, the cook .

from the diner where she works.

“It is not about happy ever after but it’s a hopeful ending.”

From the outside acting and films seems impossibly glamorous, especially when you get to appear with leading men like Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford.

“I expect it does look glamorous, but it isn’t. Parts of it can be - Golden Globe and Academy Award ceremonies and so on but the acting life generally is not like that.”

Her opposite number Rolf Saxon’s many films include box office successes like Mission: Impossible and Entrapment.

To see Frankie and Johnny contact Malvern Theatres on 01684 892277. Tickets range from £16.50 to £24.50.

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