Hayley Mills was one of the biggest child movie stars of the early 1960s, the Oscar-winning star of Pollyanna (1960) and a string of successful Disney movies including The Parent Trap (1961) and That Darn Cat (1965). Mills is the younger sister of actress Juliet Mills and the daughter of Oscar-winning actor John Mills (1970's Ryan's Daughter) and writer Mary Hayley Bell (Whistle Down the Wind, made into the 1961 movie co-starring Hayley). After years playing sweet innocents, Mills shattered that image by appearing in The Family Way (1967) and by marrying director Roy Boulting, more than thirty years her senior (they divorced in 1976). In the '70s her screen career nearly evaporated, in the '80s she appeared in three television sequels to The Parent Trap and in a the short-lived series Good Morning, Miss Bliss (1987) and in the '90s she began focusing on a stage career, touring in The King and I.
Her sister Juliet was the star of the television series Nanny and the Professor (1970-71)... The Parent Trap was remade in 1988 and starred Lindsay Lohan and Dennis Quaid.
Pollyanna is 60! Happy birthday to Hayley Mills, the child star of Pollyanna and The Parent Trap. Born into a family of entertainers, Mills was only a year old when she made her movie debut, in the film So Well Remembered, starring her father, Oscar winner John Mills. She won a special juvenile Oscar for her role as Pollyanna (1960), but didn't even know about it until her parents told her several months later. In later years, Mills acted on TV and on the stage, making her off-Broadway debut in Noel Coward'sSuite in Two Keys in 2000.
Representative Albums: "Let's Get Together With Hayley Mills," "Whistle Down the Wind," "Summer Magic"
Representative Songs: "Let's Get Together," "Femininity," "Side by Side"
Biography
Hayley Mills is known more for her acting skills and her Disney film role as Pollyanna than as a singer who made it into the Top Ten. She managed that feat once, however, and almost repeated it when she was still a child star back in the '60s. "Let's Get Together," a song she originally sang in her second Disney movie, The Parent Trap, rose to number eight in 1961. In Hawaii, it went all the way to the top of the charts. Her next release, "Johnny Jingo," hit number 21 the following year. Buena Vista issued both singles.
Thanks to the success of "Let's Get Together," Walt Disney Productions deemed it feasible that an album by Mills should go on the market. Titled Let's Get Together With Hayley Mills, the release from Buena Vista, a Disney company, hit stores in 1962 with a dozen tracks, among them her pair of hit singles. The album was reissued in CD format in the late '90s. Also in 1962, Mills released another single, "Ding Ding Ding," which was backed by "Side by Side." That same year, Mills' role in In Search of the Castaways launched a few more singles, including the ballad "Castaway" and "Let's Climb," a song that paired her with Maurice Chevalier in a duet. All of the year's singles were released by Buena Vista. In 1963, Mills sang four numbers out of seven on Alcoa Wrap Presents Music From Walt Disney's Summer Magic. The release was issued by Wonderland Music. Three years later, to tie in with Mills' appearance in the film Gypsy Girl, Mainstream released a single that shared the film's title. Its flip side featured "Younger Than 17."
The actress/singer's full name is Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills. A native of London, she hails from an acting family. Her father, John Mills, won an Oscar for his work in the 1970 film Ryan's Daughter. Her sister, Juliet Mills, is an Emmy Award-winning actress. Mother Mary Hayley Bell is a playwright and novelist, and son Crispian Mills had a successful British trad rock band, Kula Shaker, during the late '90s. For her role in Pollyanna, Mills won her own Oscar, a special juvenile award. Her parents, however, did not take her to the ceremony and only informed her of the award many months later in an effort to keeping their little girl modest.
In later life, Mills appeared in television's Saved By the Bell, which was formerly titled Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Other television work includes The Flame Trees of Thika for the BBC in 1981 and a trio of made-for-TV movies based on The Parent Trap. She later moved on to theater work, appearing in New York in Suite in 2 Keys, a play by Noel Coward, and touring with a production of The King and I during the 1990s. Despite her Top Ten hit decades earlier, critics were quick to point out her weaknesses as a singer. Mills, aware that her acting skills are mightier than her singing skills, took voice instruction. ~ Linda Seida, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: The Parent Trap, The Parent Trap, Pollyanna
First Major Screen Credit: Tiger Bay (1959)
Biography
The daughter of British actor John Mills and playwright Mary Hayley Bell, Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills made her first screen appearance as an infant in 1947's So Well Remembered. It wasn't until a decade later, however, that Hayley Mills made her formal film debut, portraying the preteen murder witness who is nearly destroyed by her connection to the criminal in 1959's Tiger Bay. Playing many scenes alongside her own father,Mills gave an uncannily affecting performance that won her the British Film Academy's Most Promising Newcomer Award. The movie also brought her to the attention of Walt Disney, ever on the lookout for talented child actors. In 1959, Mills entered Disney's orbit, and the producer placed her into the most meticulous and artistic live-action film in his studio's history up to that time: Pollyanna (1960). The movie transformed Mills from a precociously talented juvenile player into a full-fledged star, and earned her a special Academy Award for her performance. Ironically, Pollyanna was somewhat mis-marketed at the time as a film intended principally for younger girls and their mothers -- in actuality, it is a sentimental film whose dramatic content and visual craftsmanship place it closer in spirit to pictures like The Music Man, or even Shenandoah, perfectly suitable for general audiences; as a result, it was never as big a hit in theaters as it should have been, and Mills' biggest success for Disney turned out to be her next feature, The Parent Trap (1961). This movie, about a set of estranged identical twin sisters who conspire to get their divorced parents back together, gave the 15-year-old actress the chance to play two separate characters, with two distinctly different personalities. She was able to convince a major part of the audience that she was two different people (a gambit later picked up by the creators of The Patty Duke Show), and she also hit the pop music charts with a song from the film, called "Let's Get Together." In the years that followed, Mills' output for Disney proved somewhat uneven, The Moon-Spinners (1964) failing to impress critics, while the more dramatically demanding The Chalk Garden (1964), in which she played an emotionally crippled adolescent, was some of her best work, and reunited her onscreen with her father; and she excelled in the drama Whistle Down the Wind (1962), directed by Bryan Forbes and made for Rank, playing a girl who shelters an escaped criminal, who thinks he's Jesus.
The advent of the British Invasion in popular music, which imparted an appeal to all things British in America for about two years, helped sustain Mills' popularity, and her final Disney film, That Darn Cat (1965), was a hit and one of her best comedies, though she was outshone (as she might well have been) by old hands like William Demarest. Her first film after leaving the Disney fold was Gypsy Girl (1966), which marked a break from the American producer's tendency toward light comedy -- directed by her father and written by her mother, it presented Mills in the role of a retarded teenager. She was engaged by John and Roy Boulting to star in The Family Way (1966), a comedy about close-quarter familiar relations (best remembered today because of its score, written by Paul McCartney) -- that picture exploded her lingering goody-two-shoes image by offering Mills in a well-publicized nude scene, and what the scene itself didn't accomplish in changing her image, her romance and marriage to director Roy Boulting, some 33 years her senior, did. Curtailing her film appearances in the early '70s, Mills devoted most of her time to television productions; in 1986, she came back to the Disney fold with a Parent Trap TV-movie sequel. Hayley Mills is the younger sister of actress Juliet Mills. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
During the late 1960s she began performing in theatrical plays, and played in more mature roles. Although she was not able to duplicate the success she achieved as a juvenile performer, Mills has continued to act sporadically.
Mills was 12 when she was discovered by J. Lee Thompson, who was initially looking for a boy to play the lead role in Tiger Bay. Walt Disney's wife, Lillian Disney, saw her performance and suggested that Mills be given the lead role in Pollyanna. The role of the "glad girl" who moves in with her aunt catapulted Mills to super-stardom in the United States and earned her a special Academy Award.[1][2]
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." She made four additional films for Disney in a four-year span, including In Search of the Castaways, and Summer Magic. The advent of the British Invasion in popular music in 1964, courtesy of The Beatles, allowed the maturing Mills to maintain her popularity. Her final two Disney films, The Moon-Spinners and That Darn Cat!, did very well at the box office, aided by a well-publicized meeting between Mills and Beatle George Harrison in March 1964.[3]
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 lady-like. The success of "Let's Get Together" (which hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart) 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).
Mills was considered for the role of Lolita Haze in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film version of Lolita. However, Walt Disney discouraged the casting, feeling the role was not up to Disney's wholesome standard, and the part eventually went to Sue Lyon.
Post-Disney film career
After her contract with Disney expired in 1965, Mills starred in the enduring comedy The Trouble with Angels, opposite screen veteran Rosalind Russell. Looking to break from her girl-next-door image, Mills went home to England to appear as a mentally challenged teenager in the film Sky West and Crooked, which was directed by her father and written by her mother. Shortly thereafter, Mills was persuaded by her father and director Roy Boulting to star in The Family Way, a comedy about a couple having difficulty consummating their marriage, featuring a score by Paul McCartney. After her appearance in The Kingfisher Caper in 1975, Mills dropped out of the film industry for several years.[4]
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 Mills to accept more acting roles. She then returned to America, and made several appearances on the The Love Boat.
In 2007, Mills began appearing (alongside her sister Juliet) as Caroline in the ITV1 African vet drama, Wild at Heart. Critics have noted that though "Mills has continued to work in film, television, and on stage, her grown-up performances, while competent, lack the spunk and sparkle she exhibited as a young woman".[6]
Stage career
Mills made her stage debut in a 1966 West End revival of Peter Pan. In 2000, she made her Off Broadway debut in Sir Noel Coward's Suite in Two Keys, opposite American actress Judith Ivey, for which she won a Theatre World Award. In 1991 she then appeared as Anna Leonowens in the Australian production of The King and I.
Personal life
While filming The Family Way, a 20-year-old Mills met 53-year-old director Roy Boulting. The two married in 1971, and owned an apartment in London's Kensington. They then went on to purchase Cobstone Windmill in Ibstone, Buckinghamshire. The couple divorced in 1977. They had one child, Crispian Mills, who became famous in the 1990s as the lead singer and guitarist for the psychedelic rock band Kula Shaker.
Mills later had a second son, Jason Lawson, during a relationship with British actor Leigh Lawson.
Mills has had involvement with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the "Hare Krishna" movement).[7] She composed the preface to the book The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking, published in 1984.
