HAYLEY MILLS Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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HAYLEY MILLS

Name: Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills                                                       
Born: 18 April 1946 London, England                                                             
                                                                                               
Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills (born April 18, 1946) is an Academy Award-winning           
English actress.                                                                               
                                                                                               
Mills is the younger daughter of the actor Sir John Mills and the playwright                   
Mary Hayley Bell. She is also the younger sister of actress Juliet Mills, who                   
appears on the U.S. soap opera Passions and played the Nanny in Nanny and the                   
Professor.                                                                                     
                                                                                               
Mills was 12 when she was discovered by J. Lee Thompson, who was looking for a                 
boy at first to play the lead role in Tiger Bay. Walt Disney's wife, Lillian                   
Disney saw her performance and suggested that Hayley be given the lead role in                 
Pollyanna. That role of the "glad girl" who moves in with her aunt catapulted                   
Mills to super-stardom in the United States and earned Mills a special Oscar.                   
                                                                                               
Disney subsequently cast Mills as twins Sharon and Susan who reunite their                     
divorced parents in The Parent Trap. In the film, Mills sings the hit song "Let's               
Get Together". Mills made four additional films for Disney in a four-year span,                 
including In Search of the Castaways, Summer Magic, The Moon-Spinners, and That                 
Darn Cat!. During her six-year run at Disney, Mills was arguably the most                       
popular child actress of the era. Critics noted that America's favorite child                   
star was, in fact, quite British and very lady-like. In 1998, she was awarded                   
the prestigious Disney Legend award by The Walt Disney Company.                                 
                                                                                               
A teenage Mills, as she appeared in 1964's The Moon-Spinners.                                   
                                                                                               
                                                                                               
In addition to her Disney movies, Mills took the lead in several other films,                   
notably Whistle Down the Wind (based on the book of the same title written by                   
her mother Mary Hayley Bell), The Truth About Spring (with her real father, John               
Mills, cast as her father and James MacArthur as the love interest), and The                   
Chalk Garden.                                                                                   
                                                                                               
She was originally cast as Lolita Haze in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film version of               
Lolita. Walt Disney memoed to Kubrick that he felt the role was not up to Disney's             
wholesome standard, and the part eventually went to Sue Lyon.                                   
                                                                                               
After her contract with Disney expired in 1966, Mills starred in The Trouble                   
with Angels opposite Rosalind Russell. Looking to break from her clean-cut, girl-next-door     
image, Mills went home to England to star in The Family Way. Though meant to be                 
a light British comedy about a couple having difficulty consummating their                     
marriage, a brief shot of Mills' bare bottom generated a certain amount of                     
controversy upon first release, possibly because of her previous "family movie"                 
background. Though harmless by today's standards, The Family Way hurt Mills'                   
film career.                                                                                   
                                                                                               
Later starring roles for Mills include the title character in Good Morning, Miss               
Bliss (the short-lived precursor to Saved by the Bell), and as Anna Leonowens in               
the Australian production of The King and I. In 1981 Mills starred in the                       
television mini-series The Flame Trees of Thika based on Elspeth Huxley's memoir               
of her childhood in East Africa. She made her Off-Broadway debut in Sir Noel                   
Coward's Suite in Two Keys in 2000 opposite American actress Judith Ivey.                       
                                                                                               
In the mid-80s, Mills returned to The Parent Trap in a trio of TV-movies: The                   
Parent Trap II, The Parent Trap III, and Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon.                       
                                                                                               
Since 2007, Mills has had a prominent role in the ITV1 Sunday-night African vet                 
drama Wild at Heart.                                                                           
                                                                                               
Mills has had involvement with ISKCON (the 'Hare Krishna' movement), popularised               
by the British media having re-married at Bhaktivedana Manor, Hertfordshire, UK.               
She composed the preface to the book The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking,               
dated May 1984 from Hampton, England.