Hayley Mills

Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills was born on 18 April 1946 in Marylebone, London, to British actor Sir John Mills and actress and novelist Mary Hayley Bell. Her sister is actress Juliet Mills, and her brother is writer and producer Jonathan Mills. Originally from London, England, Mills would go on to build a career spanning film, television, and stage across several decades.

Mills entered the film industry at age twelve when director J. Lee Thompson, initially seeking a boy for the lead role, cast her in the British crime drama Tiger Bay (1959), which also starred her father. The film performed well at the British box office, and her performance earned her the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Producer Bill Anderson, working for Walt Disney, saw Tiger Bay and recommended Mills for the lead in Pollyanna (1960). The role of the orphaned girl who moves in with her aunt brought her to prominence in the United States and earned her a special Academy Juvenile Award, the last time the accolade was presented. Because Mills could not attend the ceremony, Annette Funicello accepted the trophy on her behalf. She also received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1961.

Disney subsequently cast Mills as twins Sharon and Susan in The Parent Trap (1961), in which she performed the duet "Let's Get Together" with herself through a split-screen technique. The song reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, number one in Mexico, number seventeen in the United Kingdom, and number twenty-nine in Canada, and led to the release of an album on Disney's Buena Vista label, Let's Get Together with Hayley Mills. A second single from the album, "Johnny Jingo," reached number twenty-one on the Billboard chart in 1962, and a third single, "Castaway," reached number fourteen in Canada. In 1962, British exhibitors voted Mills the most popular film actress in the country.

That same year, Mills appeared in Whistle Down the Wind (1961), a British film based on a novel written by her mother, about children who believe an escaped convict is Jesus. The film was a hit at the British box office, and her performance earned a BAFTA nomination for Best British Actress. She was voted the biggest star in Britain for 1961. Mills went on to complete six films for Walt Disney in total, including In Search of the Castaways (1962), Summer Magic (1963), The Moon-Spinners (1964), and That Darn Cat! (1965), the last of which was a strong commercial success. For her body of work with the studio, Mills received the Disney Legend Award.

Outside of Disney, Mills took on a range of roles during the mid-1960s. She starred alongside her father in The Truth About Spring (1965) for Universal Pictures, then appeared in The Trouble with Angels (1966), directed by Ida Lupino, in which she played a mischievous student at a Catholic boarding school opposite Rosalind Russell. The film was a major box office success. That same year, she provided the voice of the Little Mermaid in the Rankin/Bass animated feature The Daydreamer (1966) and starred in The Family Way (1966), directed by Roy Boulting, a film with mature themes featuring a musical score by Paul McCartney with arrangements by George Martin. During production, Mills began a relationship with Boulting; the two married in 1971.

In 1967, Mills appeared in Pretty Polly, a romantic drama set in Singapore opposite Indian film star Shashi Kapoor, followed by the psychological thriller Twisted Nerve (1968), directed by Boulting and co-starring Hywel Bennett. She then appeared in the romantic comedy Take a Girl Like You (1970), co-starring Oliver Reed. Mills made her West End stage debut in a 1969 revival of Peter Pan, and later appeared in a 1970 production of The Wild Duck. She continued her collaboration with Boulting in Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971) and reunited with Bennett in the mystery thriller Endless Night (1972).

On television, Mills took the starring role in the UK mini-series The Flame Trees of Thika in 1981 and played the title character in the Disney television series Good Morning, Miss Bliss in 1988. From 2007 to 2012, she appeared as Caroline, a main character in the ITV series Wild at Heart.

Mills brought her stage career to Broadway in 1996, appearing in The King and I. She received the Theatre World Award in 2000. In 2021, she published her memoirs under the title Forever Young, in which she reflected on her early career, her struggles with self-esteem and an eating disorder, the financial losses she sustained due to a ninety percent tax rate imposed by the Inland Revenue in England on her Disney earnings, and her decision at age twenty to decline a new Disney contract, having found the roles assigned to her repetitive.