Actress Kelly McGillis says no thanks
to being a role model for the LGBT community.
The 53-year-old McGillis came out gay
two years ago, telling SheWired's Girl Rock video blog that
she's “done with the man thing.” She added that she's known she
is a lesbian since 12, but was convinced that God was punishing her.
Last year, McGillis entered a civil
union in New Jersey with sales executive Melanie Leis. The two women
met in 2000 when Leis tended bar at a watering hole McGillis and
then-husband Fred Tillman owned in Key West, Florida.
In
a wide-ranging interview with gay glossy The Advocate,
McGillis said she's not interested in being a role model.
“[W]hat a terrible burden and huge
responsibility that is,” she said. “Listen, my life has been
screwed up. I've made a lot of mistakes and dumb choices in my life.
I've had some really crazy things happen, mostly of my own doing.
Do I really want to think of myself as a role model? I don't think
so. The truth is, if anything, I would like to be seen as a human
being doing the best I can with what I've been given, and as someone
who muddled through somehow and didn't kill anybody.”
McGillis starred opposite Tom Cruise in
the 1986 box office hit Top Gun. Other film credits include
Witness and The Accused, and the twice-divorced mother
of two most recently appeared in two 2008 episodes of Showtime's
groundbreaking lesbian drama The L Word, in which she played a
closeted Army Colonel trying a “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” case. She
appears in the upcoming vampire film Stake Land.