What You Didn't Know About Kelly Preston

Kelly Preston, who became one of the '90s biggest "It girls" after starring opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, has passed away at the age of 57. Preston had been battling breast cancer for the past two years, although a family representative told People that she had "cho[sen] to keep her fight private," and went on to say, "Her family asks for your understanding of their need for privacy at this time." Preston's husband John Travolta did post a heartbreaking tribute on Instagram to inform the couple's fans of her death, but ended it by saying, "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. But please know that I will feel your outpouring of love in the weeks and months ahead as we heal."

While Preston's most famous quote from her starring role as Avery Bishop may have been a cynical take on relationships — "There is no real loyalty, and the first person who taught me that was you" (via IMDb) — her own real-life love story with Travolta lasted 28 years, until death did them part. We may have thought we knew Kelly, having seen her light up the screen (big and small) since the early '80s, and yet there are still a few things about the actress that may come as a surprise.

Kelly Preston was not only born and raised in Hawaii, but she is one-eighth Native Hawaiian and has a Hawaiian middle name, Kamalelehua. This name, while is may have given her some trouble as a little girl just learning how to spell, is unique, exotic, and beautiful, as is its meaning. It translates as "garden of lahuas," and the lahua, according to legend, is a flower that will bring a shower of rain to the location from where it is plucked (via Celebrated Weekends: The Stars' Guide to 50 of the Most Exciting Cities in the World). Fittingly enough, one of Preston's earliest roles (via IMDb) was an appearance on Hawaii Five-O (not the reboot, but the original series starring Jack Lord).

It was while she was still attending high school in Oahu that Preston, by then a teen model who had several TV commercials to her credit, was called out of her PE class (via Celebrated Weekends: The Stars' Guide to 50 of the Most Exciting Cities in the World) and whisked away to Los Angeles to audition for the starring role in the teen romance The Blue Lagoon. According to her IMDb bio, the reason why Preston did not get the role (which ended up going to another teen model/actress, Brooke Shields) was that she was considered to be just "too sultry."

As a beautiful, high-profile woman, it's only natural that Preston would have had her pick of men, and since girls just wanna have fun, she took her time dating a representative sample of what Hollywood had to offer before finding lasting love with Travolta. One of the men she dated was former "Sexiest Man Alive" George Clooney, who, oddly enough, gifted her a pet pot-bellied pig (via the Mirror).

Yet another one of her romantic conquests was one she may have come to regret — a live-in liaison and brief engagement to the tiger-blooded Charlie Sheen. This relationship was rumored to have come to a violent end when Preston was shot with a handgun belonging to Sheen, but as E! Online revealed some 20+ years after the incident took place, it really was just an unfortunate accident and not a case of domestic abuse.

While Kelly Preston and Tom Cruise shared a very steamy scene in Jerry Maguire, it was evidently no big deal for her, just another day at the office. In fact, it was such a non-event that she forgot to mention it to her husband. This led to an awkward moment for Travolta the first time he saw the film. As he told host James Corden in an interview on The Late, Late Show (via Fox News), "You don't even know what awkward is... until you sit in the screening of Jerry Maguire and you don't know that scene is coming up and your wife is with Tom Cruise in the middle of something, that is astonishing." As to how he responded to hearing his wife shout "Never ever stop f****** me" to Cruise, Travolta simply said, "That was rough," but perhaps unsurprisingly, he and his fellow Scientologist aren't exactly best buds.