MAVERICK IS IN LOVE (AGAIN)
KELLY McGillis, 64, who played Cruise’s love interest in the 1986 film, was not invited to take part in the sequel. Nor was Meg Ryan, who played the wife of Lieutenant Nick ‘Goose’ Bradshaw in the original.
McGillis is sanguine about the decision to dump her character. ‘I’m old and I’m fat and I look ageappropriate for what my age is and that’s not what Hollywood is about,’ she said.
The actress, whose love scene with Cruise to Berlin’s Take My Breath Away made the single a global No 1, added: ‘It wasn’t a major decision to leave Hollywood – it was just that other things became more important.
‘To me, my relationships to other people became far more important than my relationship to fame.’
In the new movie, Jennifer Connelly,
51, plays bar owner Penny Benjamin, a character referenced in the first film as having her heart broken by Maverick.
Her teenage daughter, Amelia, played by 17-year-old Lyliana Wray, warns him: ‘Don’t break my mum’s heart like you did first time around.’ (Wray was only 13 when she filmed the movie, which was originally set to open in 2020, but was delayed due to Covid.) Maverick develops a close bond with Amelia – something that is likely to draw attention to Cruise’s difficult relationship with his reallife daughter Suri, 15, his child with his ex-wife Katie Holmes. Although the actor remains close to his son and daughter from his first marriage to Nicole Kidman – both are members of the Church of Scientology like Cruise himself – it has been reported he doesn’t see as much of Suri because neither she nor Holmes are Scientologists.
Cruise has denied rumours of a rift.