Born Kelly Palzis, on Oct 13, 1962, in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

I used to think that I had missed the boat as far as Kelly Preston was concerned.

For all the lame movies and TV shows I've sat through over the years, there are some surprising gaps in my pop cultural education, and in most cases it's too late to fill them. I've never seen an episode of I Love Lucy or Laverne & Shirley, for example — my mom didn't care for sitcoms, and didn't like my sisters and me watching them. Of course, I could have easily watched both those shows anytime I liked once I left home, but the time to watch them was when I was a kid, like everyone else; as an adult, any interest I might have had in seeing those shows has long since passed.

Actresses and models, too, are usually best appreciated at the time they're still current, which is why I've been so slow to embrace Kelly Preston. If I had lived like most guys my age, I would have savored her back in the Eighties in Mischief and Secret Admirer (the only thing memorable about either film was that Kelly looked fantastic in the buff), then remembered her fondly through the Nineties when, with the exception of Jerry McGuire, nothing especially notable was going on with her. But instead, I saw Mischief on video with my mom and sisters, who, being less interested in Kelly Preston's goods than I was, fast-forwarded through her nude scene over my feeble protests. (Conversely, whenever we watched a Jean-Claude Van Damme flick, I had to endure watching his buns a-flexing one frame at a time every time he did the splits.) Finally seeing Mischief on my own became something of a personal mission for me, a childhood wrong that needed to be righted, but by the time I got my own video card, I was living with a girlfriend who bore little sympathy for my softcore crusade and made watching such films difficult. It would be years, in fact, before I at long last got to see the forbidden footage from Mischief, but by then too much time had passed and my interest in Kelly Preston, who had long since dropped out of the spotlight, had almost completely dissipated.

Which is too bad, since it was during that time that Kelly was at her most interesting, at least as far as her love life goes. She married actor Kevin Gage after critics started noticing her in movies like Mischief and Secret Admirer (both released in 1985), but the marriage ended a few months after meeting John Travolta while filming The Experts in 1987. She then moved in with George Clooney in time for the release of Twins, a big film that was expected to revitalize her career. It didn't, whereupon Clooney left her for an old girlfriend and Kelly sued him for custody of his pot bellied pig. Soon after that she hooked up with Charlie Sheen, who gave her an engagement ring a few months later, then shot her in the arm in their apartment (he says it was an accident), then dumped her in 1990 for porn actress Ginger Lynn Allen. After a few months, she met up again with John Travolta, and married him the following year, becoming then a high profile defender both of Scientology and of her husband's heterosexuality. (Travolta's the subject of many a gay rumor.)

It's in this role, as Mrs. Travolta, that Kelly's probably better known now, even though she's been working more or less continuously since 1985. Since Spellbinder, I haven't seen her in anything except Battlefield Earth. (I saw and heard those "you complete me" and "show me the money" clips from Jerry McGuire so often that I had no desire to see the film.) But a little while ago they started playing Mischief several times a day on cable, a film I hadn't seen in over a decade, and after watching it again, all the old fascination came flooding back, and I saw once more why I had gone through all that trouble to see it in the first place. And having thus rediscovered her, I noticed, too, that she still looks pretty good — if a little non-descript sometimes — even at the ripe old age of 40.

All of this is not to say, of course, that it's never too late to get into an actress or model from way back when. Farrah Fawcett, Bo Derek, Morgan Fairchild, along with other sex icons from the Eighties that I rarely got to see during that decade — I've no more interest in seeing any of them now than I would in watching Lucy re-runs. Most dishes have to be served hot or not at all. It's just that some dishes — Kelly being one of them — stay hot longer than others.

Also sprach Golem.

Film

• Sky High (2005) .... Josie/Jetstream
• Return to Sender (2004) .... Susan Kennan
• The Cat in the Hat (2003) .... Joan Walden
• Eulogy (2003) .... Lucy
• View from the Top (2003) .... Sherry
• What a Girl Wants (2003) .... Libby Reynolds
• Daddy and Them (2001) .... Rose
• Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000) .... Chirk
• For Love of the Game (1999) .... Jane Aubrey
• Holy Man (1998) .... Kate Newell
• Jack Frost (1998) .... Gabby Frost
• Welcome to Hollywood (1998) .... Herself
• Addicted to Love (1997; aka “Forlorn”) .... Linda Green
• Nothing to Lose (1997) .... Ann Beam
• Citizen Ruth (1996) .... Rachel
• Curdled (1996) .... Kelly
• From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) .... Newscaster Kelly Houge
• Jerry Maguire (1996) .... Avery Bishop [nudity is pretty slight]
• Mrs. Munck (1995) .... Young Rose
• Waiting to Exhale (1995) .... Kathleen [uncredited]
• Double Cross (1994) .... Vera Blanchard
• Love Is a Gun (1994) .... Jean Starr
• Only You (1992) .... Amanda Hughes
• Run (1991) .... Karen Landers
• The Experts (1989) .... Bonnie
• Spellbinder (1988) .... Miranda Reed
• Twins (1988) .... Marnie Mason
• Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) .... Violet [segment “Titan Man”]
• Love at Stake (1987; aka “Burnin’ Love”) .... Sara Lee
• A Tiger's Tale (1987) .... Shirley
• 52 Pick-Up (1986) .... Cini
• SpaceCamp (1986) .... Tish
• Mischief (1985) .... Marilyn
• Secret Admirer (1985) .... Deborah Anne Fimple
• 10 to Midnight (1983) .... Doreen
• Christine (1983) .... Roseanne
• Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) .... Dhyana

• Tales From the Crypt: “The Switch” (1990; HBO; aka “Tales From the Crypt, Vol. 3”) .... Linda

• Bar Hopping (2000) .... Bebe
• Intimate Portrait: Kelly Preston (1999) .... Herself
• Little Surprises (1995) .... Ginger
• Cheyenne Warrior (1994) .... Rebecca Carver
• The American Clock (1993) .... Diana Marley
• The Perfect Bride (1991) .... Laura

• Fear Factor: “Celebrity Fear Factor” (11/27/2001) .... Contestant
• Blue Thunder: “Long Flight, The” (3/16/1984) .... Amy Braddock
• CHiPs: “Things That Go Creep in the Night” (4/10/1983) .... Anna
• Quincy: “On Dying High” (2/9/1983) .... Ginger
• For Love and Honor (1983) .... Mary Lee
• Capitol (1982) .... Gillian McCandless

• Not Under My Roof (2001) .... Herself

Cyber Temples

• Kelly Preston Nude Celebrity Movie Reviews
  Mr. Skin
  Bio, filmography, and nude stills and clips from her films

Miscellaneous

• Kelly Preston Filmography
  Internet Movie Database
  Always up-to-date filmography
• Kelly Preston
  Wikipedia
  Kelly Preston in wikireality