Actor Kelly Preston died Sunday after a long battle with cancer, her family announced. She was 57.
“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,” Preston’s husband, actor John Travolta, wrote on Instagram. “She fought a courageous fight with the love and support of so many.”
Born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith in Honolulu, she changed her name to Kelly Preston before landing her first film role in the 1985 romantic comedy “Mischief,” Reuters reported. Over the next three decades, Preston appeared in dozens of films and television shows, notably “Jerry Maguire,” “Twins” and “For Love of the Game.” She met Travolta in 1987 and they married in Paris four years later.
The couple had three children together. Their son, Jett, died in 2009 at the age of 16.
Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Preston and Travolta starred on screen in “Battlefield Earth” (2000). Most recently, the couple played husband and wife John and Victoria Gotti in “Gotti,” the 2018 film about the mob boss.
Tributes to the actress began pouring in late Sunday:
Travolta said his family would seek privacy in the coming months, but that he would “feel your outpouring of love” during that time.
“I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while,” he said. “But please know that I will feel your outpouring of love in the weeks and months ahead as we heal.”
Preston is survived by her husband and two children, Ella, 20, and Benjamin, 9.
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