Actress was foil in comedy, drama
LOS ANGELES — Kelly Preston, who played dramatic and comic foil to actors ranging from Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins, died Sunday, husband John Travolta said. She was 57.
Travolta said in an Instagram post that his wife of 28 years died after a two-year battle with breast cancer.
“It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer,” Travolta said. “She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many.”
The couple had three children together.
“Shocked by this sad news,” Maria Shriver said on Twitter. “Kelly was such a bright loving soul, a talented actress, and a loving mom and wife. My heart breaks for her family who have already known such sadness and grief.”
Born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith on Oct. 13, 1962, in Honolulu, Preston had a lengthy acting career in movies and television beginning in the 1980s, including the 1985 teen comedy Mischief, 1986’s Space Camp and her breakthrough, 1988’s Twins. Preston played Marnie, the woman who marries Schwarzenegger’s character.
Preston was first married to actor Kevin Gage. They divorced in 1987. The year after, Preston met Travolta while shooting the 1989 film The Experts, a box-office flop about a Soviet KGB agent who hires hip New Yorkers to update the spy program’s understanding of American society.
They were married in 1991 at a midnight ceremony in Paris while expecting their first son, Jett.
Preston occasionally appeared in films with her husband, though the results were seldom among either’s best work. Among them: the box-office bomb Battlefield Earth in 2000 and the 2009 Disney comedy Old Dogs.