LOS ANGELES (REUTERS) - American actress Kelly Preston, who has appeared in films including Jerry Maguire (1996) and Twins (1988), has died aged 57 after battling breast cancer for nearly two years, her husband John Travolta announced in an Instagram post late on Sunday (July 12).

"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," the 66-year-old actor said in his post.

Born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith in Honolulu, she changed her name to Kelly Preston before securing her first film role in the 1985 rom-com Mischief, then appeared in another teen comedy, Secret Admirer (1985).

Travolta, star of the hit dance movies Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978), met Preston in 1988 when they appeared together in a film called The Experts (1989). They married on Sept 5, 1991, in Paris.

Preston is survived by her husband and their children - daughter Ella, 20, and nine-year-old son Benjamin. Their son Jett died at age 16 in January 2009 during a family vacation in the Bahamas.

"I have never met anyone as courageous, strong, beautiful and loving as you," Ella Travolta wrote in a tribute posted on Instagram.