In the late 1960s, Mills began performing in theatrical plays, making her stage debut in a 1969 West End revival of Peter Pan. She also played in more mature roles. For her success with Disney, she received the Disney Legend Award. Although she has not maintained the box office success or the Hollywood A-list she experienced as a child actress, she has continued to make films and TV appearances, including a starring role in the UK television mini-series The Flame Trees of Thika in 1981, the title role in Disney's television series Good Morning, Miss Bliss in 1988, and as Caroline, a main character in Wild at Heart (2007–2012) on ITV in the UK. She published her memoirs, Forever Young, in 2021.
Mills was 12 when she was cast by J. Lee Thompson, who was initially looking for a boy to play the lead role, in Tiger Bay (1959) which co-starred her father. The movie was popular at the box office in Britain.[3][4]
Disney
Bill Anderson, one of Walt Disney's producers, saw Tiger Bay and suggested that Mills be given the lead role in Pollyanna (1960).[5] The role of the orphaned "glad girl" who moves in with her aunt catapulted her to stardom in the United States and earned her a special Academy Award of Juvenile Oscar, the last person to win the accolade. Because she could not be present to receive the trophy, Annette Funicello accepted it on her behalf.[6] Disney subsequently cast Mills as twins Sharon and Susan who reunite their divorced parents in The Parent Trap (1961). In the film, she sings "Let's Get Together" as a duet with herself. The song was a hit around the world, reaching number 8 in the US.[7]
Mills received an offer to make a film in Britain for Bryan Forbes, Whistle Down the Wind (1961), based on a novel by her mother Mary Hayley Bell, about some children who believe an escaped convict is Jesus. It was a hit at the British box office and she was voted the biggest star in Britain for 1961.[8] Mills was offered the title role in Lolita by Stanley Kubrick, but her father turned it down. "I wish I had done it", she said in 1962. "It was a smashing film."[9] Mills returned to Disney for an adventure film, In Search of the Castaways (1962), based on a novel by Jules Verne. It was another popular success, and she was voted the fifth biggest star in the country for the next two years.[10]
In 1963, Disney announced plans to film an adaptation of Dodie Smith's novel I Capture the Castle, with Mills in the role of Cassandra.[11] Disney ended up dropping the project, while still retaining film rights to the book, when the novelist and the selected screenwriter Sally Benson did not get along; Mills grew too old for the part before the project could be revived.[12] Her fourth movie for Disney did less well than her previous Disney films, but was still successful: Summer Magic (1963), a musical adaptation of the novel Mother Carey's Chickens. Ross Hunter hired her for a British-American production The Chalk Garden (1964), playing a girl who torments governess Deborah Kerr. Back at Disney she was in a film about jewel thieves, The Moon-Spinners (1964), getting her first on screen kiss from Peter McEnery.[13][14] Mills had a change of pace with Sky West and Crooked (1965), set in the world of gypsies, written by her mother and directed by her father,[15] but it was not commercially successful. In contrast, her last film with Disney, the comedy That Darn Cat! (also 1965), did very well at the box office.[16]
Hayley Mills, 1960
During her six-year run at Disney, Mills was arguably the most popular child actress of the era. Critics noted that America's favourite child star was, in fact, quite British and very ladylike. The success of "Let's Get Together" (which hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, No. 17 in Britain and No. 1 in Mexico,) also led to the release of a record album on Disney's Buena Vista label, Let's Get Together with Hayley Mills, which also included her only other hit song, "Johnny Jingo" (Billboard No. 21, 1962). In 1962, British exhibitors voted her the most popular film actress in the country.[17]
In Forever Young: A Memoir,[18] among other topics, she reveals high points from her early career, as well as struggles with self-esteem[19] and an eating disorder. Describing how she turned down roles that "undermined the Disney image" such as Doctor Doolittle and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, she wrote that "I think by being under contract to Walt Disney, as much as I really appreciated the opportunity it gave me, [and] the career it gave me, quite frankly, it hampered me from getting more different kinds of roles and eventually it also influenced how I felt about myself. I wasn't sure what I was capable of."[20] Ultimately, at age 20, she turned down a new Disney contract. She felt her character castings led to her "repeating herself" with the studio.[20] She also detailed, how at age 21, she lost most of her Disney fortune to a 90% tax rate implemented by the Inland Revenue in England. Her appeal to regain her funds was eventually shot down, with Mills admitting that at that time, she was worried about going the path of Judy Garland and becoming a "studio asset".[20]
Post-Disney film career
For Universal, Mills made another film with her father, The Truth About Spring (1965), co-starring Disney regular James MacArthur as her love interest. It was mildly popular. However The Trouble with Angels (1966), was a huge hit; she played a prankish Catholic boarding school girl with "scathingly brilliant" schemes, opposite screen veteran Rosalind Russell, and directed by another Hollywood veteran, Ida Lupino. She then provided the voice of the Little Mermaid for The Daydreamer (1966).[citation needed]
Shortly after The Truth About Spring, Mills appeared alongside her father and Hywel Bennett in director Roy Boulting's critically acclaimed film The Family Way (1966), a comedy about a couple having difficulty consummating their marriage, featuring a score by Paul McCartney and arrangements by Beatles producer George Martin. She began a romantic relationship with Boulting and they eventually married, in 1971.[21] She then starred as the protagonist of Pretty Polly (1967), opposite famous Indian film actor Shashi Kapoor, in Singapore.[citation needed]
Mills made another movie for Boulting, the controversial horror thriller Twisted Nerve in 1968, along with her Family Way co-star Hywel Bennett. She made a comedy, Take a Girl Like You (1970), with Oliver Reed and made her West End debut in The Wild Duck in 1970.[22] She worked for Boulting again on Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971), replacing the original female lead.[23]
According to one writer, "She was a movie star for about a decade... a genuine, old-school, above-the-title movie star: listed in box-office polls, the focus of a carefully-protected public image, signatory to a long-term contract with a studio who would try to craft vehicles for her. In fact, you could make an argument that Hayley Mills was one of the last stars for whom that last factor applied, at least in English-speaking cinema."[25]
Television resurgence and reception
In 1981, Mills returned to acting with a starring role in the UK television mini-series The Flame Trees of Thika, based on Elspeth Huxley's memoir of her childhood in East Africa. The series was well received, prompting her to accept more acting roles.[citation needed] She then returned to America and made two appearances on The Love Boat in 1985, and an episode of Murder, She Wrote in 1986.[citation needed]
Mills recalled her childhood in the 2000 documentary film Sir John Mills' Moving Memories, which was directed by Marcus Dillistone and produced by her brother Jonathan.[citation needed] In 2005 she appeared in the acclaimed short film, Stricken, written and directed by Jayce Bartok.[citation needed] From 2007 to 2012, she appeared as Caroline in the ITV1 African vet drama Wild at Heart; her sister Juliet Mills was a guest star in the drama, which was the first time they had appeared on screen together.[27]
In 2010, Mills appeared in Mandie and the Cherokee Treasure, based on one of the popular Mandie novels of Lois Gladys Leppard. In 2011, she starred in the film Foster alongside Toni Collette. Mills guest-starred in episodes of Midsomer Murders and Moving On in 2014.[citation needed] In 2019, she had a role in the television series Pitching In set at a holiday park in Wales. In 2021, Mills played Michael Sheen's mother in the film Last Train to Christmas, and in 2022 she had a recurring role in the television thriller series Compulsion. [citation needed]
In February 2023 she appeared in the fifth series of the ITV crime drama Unforgotten as Lady Emma Hume.[28] In September 2023, Mills appeared in an episode of The Wheel of Time.[29]
In 2000 she made her Off-Broadway debut in Sir Noël Coward's Suite in Two Keys, opposite American actress Judith Ivey, for which she won a Theatre World Award.[citation needed] In 2001, Mills starred as Desiree Armfeldt in a production of "A Little Night Music" in Seattle, Washington. It was a co-production with the city's A Contemporary Theatre and the Fifth Avenue Theatre.[33][34]
In December 2007, for their annual birthday celebration of "The Master", The Noël Coward Society invited Mills as the guest celebrity to lay flowers in front of Coward's statue at New York's Gershwin Theatre, thereby commemorating the anniversary of the 108th birthday of Coward.[citation needed]
Mills had a second son, Jason Lawson, born in July 1976,[39] during a relationship with actor Leigh Lawson.[40][41] She and Lawson split up in the early 1980s.[42]
In the 1980s, following her breakup with Lawson, Mills developed an interest in a number of Eastern religions.[42] She wrote the preface to the book The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking, published in 1984,[43] although she was not a member of Hare Krishna'.[42] In 1988, Mills co-edited, with Marcus Maclaine, My God: Letters from the Famous on God and the Life Hereafter (Pelham Books, 1988).[1]
Mills's partner since 1997 and as of 2023 is actor/writer Firdous Bamji, who is 20 years her junior. They met when touring playing the lead roles in The King and I.[44][45][32]
Health
In April 2008, Mills was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had surgery and started, but quickly abandoned, chemotherapy after only three sessions because of the severity of the side effects. She credits her survival to the alternative treatments she used. She told Good Housekeeping magazine in January 2012 that she had fully recovered.[45]
Memoir
Mills published a memoir about her life and career, Forever Young: A Memoir, in September 2021.[18]
Academy Juvenile Award note: Mills' miniature Oscar was later lost or stolen; the Academy rectified this by privately presenting Mills with a full-size Oscar replacement in 2023.
Let's Get Together with Hayley Mills, released in 1962, was Mills' only solo album. It had the million-selling song "Let's Get Together" and "Johnny Jingo".
John Edward Boulting and Roy Alfred Clarence Boulting, known collectively as the Boulting brothers, were English filmmakers and identical twins who became known for their series of satirical comedies in the 1950s and 1960s. They produced many of their films through their own production company, Charter Film Productions, which they founded in 1937.
The Parent Trap is a 1961 American romantic comedy film written and directed by David Swift. It stars Hayley Mills as a pair of teenage twins plotting to reunite their divorced parents by switching places with each other. Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith play the parents. Although the plot is very close to that of the 1945 film Twice Blessed, The Parent Trap is based on the 1949 German children's novel Das doppelte Lottchen by Erich Kästner.
Sir John Mills was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. He excelled on camera as an appealing British everyman who often portrayed guileless, wounded war heroes. In 1971, he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ryan's Daughter.
Juliet Maryon Mills is a British-American actress.
Pollyanna is a 1913 novel by American author Eleanor H. Porter, considered a classic of children's literature. The book's success led to Porter soon writing a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, known as "Glad Books", were later published, most of them written by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith. Further sequels followed, including Pollyanna Plays the Game by Colleen L. Reece, published in 1997. Due to the book's fame, "Pollyanna" has become a byword for someone who, like the title character, has an unfailingly optimistic outlook; a subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle. Despite the current common use of the term to mean "excessively cheerful", Pollyanna and her father played the glad game as a method of coping with the real difficulties and sorrows that, along with luck and joy, shape every life.
Nancy Ann Olson is an American retired actress. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Sunset Boulevard (1950). She co-starred with William Holden in four films, and later appeared in The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and its sequel, Son of Flubber (1963), as well as the disaster film Airport 1975 (1974). Olson retired from acting in the mid-1980s, although she has made a few rare returns, most recently in 2014.
Martine Carol was a French film actress. She frequently was cast as an elegant blonde seductress. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, she was the leading sex symbol and a top box-office draw of French cinema, and she was considered a French version of America's Marilyn Monroe. One of her more famous roles was as the title character in Lola Montès (1955), directed by Max Ophüls, in a role that required dark hair. However, by the late 1950s, roles for Carol had become fewer, partly because of the introduction of Brigitte Bardot.
Mary Hayley Bell, Lady Mills was an English actress and writer, married for 64 years to actor Sir John Mills. Her novel Whistle Down the Wind was adapted as a film, starring her teenaged daughter, actress Hayley Mills.
The Parent Trap is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Nancy Meyers in her directorial debut, who also wrote with David Swift and Charles Shyer, who also produced. It is a remake of the 1961 film of the same name and an adaptation of Erich Kästner's 1949 German novel Lisa and Lottie.
Eileen Cecilia "Patricia" Collinge was an Irish-American actress and writer. She was best known for her stage appearances, as well as her roles in the films The Little Foxes (1941) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943). She was nominated for an Academy Award and won a NBR Award for The Little Foxes.
Joanna Barnes was an American actress and writer.
Janet Munro was a British actress. She won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and received a BAFTA Film Award nomination for her performance in the film Life for Ruth (1962).
The Family Way is a 1966 British comedy-drama film produced and directed by John and Roy Boulting, respectively, and starring father and daughter John Mills and Hayley Mills. Based on Bill Naughton's play All in Good Time (1963), with screenplay by Naughton, the film began life in 1961 as the television play Honeymoon Postponed. It is about the marital difficulties of a young newlywed couple living in a crowded house with the husband's family.
The 33rd Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1960, were held on April 17, 1961, hosted by Bob Hope at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. This was the first ceremony to be aired on ABC television, which has aired the Academy Awards ever since.
The Parent Trap II is a 1986 American made-for-television comedy film and a sequel to Disney's 1961 film The Parent Trap and the second installment in The Parent Trap series. It premiered on the Disney Channel on July 26, 1986 as a part of the channel’s “Hayley Mills Film Festival” banner.
"Let's Get Together" is a song written by Robert and Richard Sherman for the 1961 Disney film The Parent Trap.
Whistle Down the Wind is a 1961 British crime drama film directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Hayley Mills, Bernard Lee and Alan Bates. It was adapted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall from the 1958 novel of the same name by Mary Hayley Bell.
Tiger Bay is a 1959 British crime drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson. It stars John Mills as a police superintendent investigating a murder; his real-life daughter Hayley Mills, in her first major film role, as a girl who witnesses the murder; and Horst Buchholz as a young sailor who commits the murder in a moment of passion. The title refers to the Tiger Bay district of Cardiff, where much of the film was shot.
Pollyanna is a 1960 American comedy-drama film starring child actress Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, and Richard Egan in a story about a cheerful orphan changing the outlook of a small town. The film was written and directed by David Swift, based on the 1913 novel Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. The film won Hayley Mills an Academy Juvenile Award. It was the last film of actor Adolphe Menjou.
In Search of the Castaways is a 1962 American adventure film starring Maurice Chevalier and Hayley Mills in a tale about a worldwide search for a shipwrecked sea captain. The film was produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Robert Stevenson from a screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley, based upon Jules Verne's 1868 adventure novel Captain Grant's Children.
↑ Bell, Mary Hayley (1968). What Shall We Do Tomorrow?. Cassell & Co. LTD. pp.180–182.
↑ Murray Schumach (25 July 1961). "J. Lee Thompson discusses career: 'Guns of Navarone' director took devious path to films". The New York Times. p.18.
↑ McFarlane, Brian. "Mills, Hayley (1946-) Biography". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 11 September 2024. [from] Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
↑ Mosley, Leonard (1990). Disney's World. Scarborough House. pp.257–258. ISBN9781589796560.
↑ Forbes, Bryan (1993). A Divided Life, Mandarin. p. 29
↑ Glenn, Larry (9 September 1962). "HOLLYWOOD STAPLE: Hayley and Mrs. Mills View Family Feature The Varsity Change of Pace Partial Solution". The New York Times. p.137.
↑ "Most Popular Films Of 1963." Times [London, England] 3 Jan. 1964: 4. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 11 July 2012.
↑ "Newsmakers". Los Angeles Times. 12 August 1976. British actress Hayley Mills and Leigh Lawson with son Jason, raising voice outside London hospital where he was born July 30.
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