Kelly Preston's Real Name: Kelly Kamalelehua Smith

Quick answer: Kelly Preston was born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith on October 13, 1962, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Preston was her professional surname. She starred in Twins, Jerry Maguire, and For Love of the Game and was married to John Travolta for 28 years. She died on July 12, 2020, at 57, after a two-year battle with breast cancer, Travolta announced (AP News; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

The Associated Press obituary states that she was "Born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith on Oct. 13, 1962, in Honolulu, Hawaii." The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Preston, Kelly," with the cross-reference "Smith, Kelly Kamalelehua, 1962-2020." The LOC's citation, taken from an obituary dated July 13, 2020, gives her birth date as October 16, 1962, so the two records differ by three days. AP and most references use October 13.

The same LOC record says she had several minor television roles before her first important film part, in Mischief (1985).

Career highlights

According to AP, Preston's early films included the teen comedy Mischief (1985) and SpaceCamp (1986). Her breakthrough was Twins (1988), in which she played Marnie, the woman who marries Arnold Schwarzenegger's character. The next year she met Travolta on the set of The Experts (1989), and they married in 1991 at a midnight ceremony in Paris.

Her best-reviewed role, AP wrote, was in Jerry Maguire (1996) as the ex-fiancée of Tom Cruise's sports agent who dumps him early in the film; the Daily News called her "icily effective." She starred opposite Kevin Costner in For Love of the Game (1999). In 2003 she appeared in What a Girl Wants and played the mother in the live-action The Cat in the Hat. The next year she appeared in the music video for Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved."

Preston and Travolta had three children: Jett, Ella Bleu, and Benjamin. Jett died in January 2009 at 16 after a seizure during a family vacation in the Bahamas. Preston returned to acting in The Last Song (2010). She and Travolta last appeared together in Gotti (2018).

Death

Travolta announced on Instagram that she died on July 12, 2020. "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," he wrote, AP reported. She was 57. Maria Shriver and Russell Crowe were among those who paid tribute.

Name notes for searchers

She was born Kelly Smith and worked professionally as Kelly Preston. Her middle name, Kamalelehua, appears in both the AP obituary and Library of Congress records.