Kelly McGillis can make a quiet exchange feel equally important to both people in it. We value her restraint in Witness, where Rachel’s feelings carry as much weight as Harrison Ford’s uncertainty.
Fi1m perspective
In Witness (1985), Kelly McGillis looks at Harrison Ford and lets us see Rachel weighing the attraction without spelling it out. She gives the woman’s feelings the same importance as the policeman’s uncertainty, so the romance never feels like a diversion arranged for him. We were moved by those exchanges because both actors make the possibility of getting closer seem to require care. Peter Weir gives them a romance worth watching even when the crime story starts reaching for familiar answers.
That performance was her breakthrough, following her film debut in Reuben, Reuben (1983). Top Gun (1986) brought wider recognition and the role of Charlie Blackwood; in The Accused (1988), she played prosecutor Kathryn Murphy opposite Jodie Foster. Her casting has often favoured intelligent, independent women, but the category is too broad to explain the work. In Witness, McGillis lets Rachel be reserved without becoming remote, and keeps us interested in her response rather than simply waiting for Ford to act.
Thom Noble’s editing helps: he allows the quiet passages to last, giving McGillis and Ford time to register their feelings without making each pause solemn. Maurice Jarre’s music is less reliable, sometimes pressing for an emotion the actors have already supplied. We would rather the score gave them more room. The thriller is less convincing than the courtship, but that is a fault in the film around McGillis, not a reason to discount her performance.
Her work moved away from major studios in the 1990s, with a return to the stage, including Shakespeare, and a later shift into independent and horror films. Stake Land (2010), The Innkeepers (2011) and We Are What We Are (2013) belong to that later stretch. Those credits make a career described only through Top Gun look rather incomplete. Start with Witness, and give its silences as much attention as its investigation.
Biography
Kelly Ann McGillis is an American actress. She was born on 9 July 1957 in Newport Beach, California, and trained at the Juilliard School, graduating in 1983.
McGillis made her film debut in Reuben, Reuben (1983). Her breakthrough came with the role of Rachel Lapp in Witness (1985), for which she received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations. She next played Charlie in Top Gun (1986).
Subsequent film roles include Kathryn Murphy in The Accused (1988). In later years she appeared in horror films such as Stake Land (2010), The Innkeepers (2011) and We Are What We Are (2013).
