Our tribute to Kelly Preston (1962-2020)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Sad news to start the week off folks, but it looks like the great Kelly Preston, star of films like JERRY MAGUIRE, TWINS, SKY HIGH, and longtime wife of John Travolta has passed away after what’s been revealed as a long battle with breast cancer. She was only fifty-seven. Travolta himself made the announcement via an Instagram post late last night.

Preston and Travolta always seemed to have one of the happiest Hollywood marriages, with them having been married since 1991, after meeting on the set of the now-forgotten flick, THE EXPERTS. Tragedy struck in 2009 when their son Jett died while on a family vacation after having suffered a seizure. They had two other children, Ella Bleu, who joined her parents on-screen in the Disney flick OLD DOGS, while in 2010, the had a second son, Benjamin.

Preston had a long list of credits, with her starting as kind of an eighties dream girl in movies like MISCHIEF, SECRET ADMIRER, and the cult horror flick SPELLBINDER. She had a great role in 1988’s TWINS as the love interest who memorably deflowers Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Julius and also starred opposite Patrick Dempsey in a b-action flick from 1991 that I loved as a kid called RUN. Her best roles came in the nineties when she starred opposite Tom Cruise in JERRY MAGUIRE, Meg Ryan in ADDICTED TO LOVE, and had a really good part opposite Kevin Costner in FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME. In the 2000’s she popped up in a cameo opposite her husband in BATTLEFIELD EARTH, before appearing in the cult Disney superhero flick SKY HIGH. Her last onscreen appearance was opposite her husband in GOTTI.

I gotta say, this one hurts. Preston was so young and she and Travolta had already been through so much after their son passed away. It always looked like they had a rock-solid marriage, and Preston, in my opinion, never got the opportunities she deserved on the big screen. Like many, I had a massive crush on her as a kid which never really went away as I got older, and I was always happy to see her turn up on screen. She seemed to have an especially strong knack for comedy, shown by JERRY MAGUIRE, and I’m surprised her role in FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME never propelled her to the A-list, although it’s always seemed that, for Preston, family came first. Our condolences to the whole Preston-Travolta family. She will be missed.