Juliet Mills

Juliet Maryon Mills, born on 21 November 1941 in London, England, is a British-American actress whose career has spanned stage, film, and television across more than six decades. The daughter of actor Sir John Mills and playwright Mary Hayley Bell, she is the elder sister of actress Hayley Mills and director Jonathan Mills. Growing up within her parents' professional circles, Mills was surrounded from childhood by figures including Rex Harrison, David Niven, and Marlon Brando. Her godmother was actress Vivien Leigh, and her godfather was playwright Noël Coward. She attended the Elmhurst Ballet School in Camberley, Surrey, and made her earliest screen appearances as a child extra, including an uncredited appearance as an infant in the 1942 wartime film In Which We Serve, which starred her father.

Mills made her first major stage appearance at age 16, playing Pamela Harrington in Peter Shaffer's Five Finger Exercise, which ran for a year in London before transferring to the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. Her Broadway career extended from 1959 to 1964 and also included the production Alfie!. For her performance in Five Finger Exercise, Mills received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1960, at the age of 18.

Her television work gained wide attention when she was cast in 1969 in the American sitcom Nanny and the Professor, which premiered on ABC in January 1970. Mills played Phoebe Figalilly, a nanny with seemingly magical abilities, and the role earned her Golden Globe Award nominations in both 1971 and 1973. The series ran for two seasons before cancellation following a change in its broadcast timeslot. Her film work during this period included Avanti! in 1972, directed by Billy Wilder, in which she starred opposite Jack Lemmon, and which she has described as the highlight of her film career. In 1974, she starred in the Italian horror film Beyond the Door, playing Jessica Barrett, a woman who becomes demonically possessed; the film earned over fifteen million dollars at the box office. That same year, Mills won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy or Drama Special for her role in the television miniseries QB VII. During the 1974–75 television season, she also held a recurring role as Dr. Claire Hanley on NBC's Born Free.

In 1980, Mills returned to the stage in The Elephant Man, appearing alongside Maxwell Caulfield, who became her third husband. In 1983, she joined The Mirror Theater Ltd's Mirror Repertory Company, performing in repertory productions including Rain, Paradise Lost, Inheritors, and The Hasty Heart. Mills was the subject of the television program This Is Your Life in 1992, when host Michael Aspel surprised her during the curtain call of Fallen Angels at the Richmond Theatre.

From 1999 until the series concluded in August 2008, Mills appeared on the daytime drama Passions as Tabitha Lenox, a witch who had been burned at the stake in the 17th century. The character was recast as a good witch in a June 2007 episode. Mills received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress for the role. Following Passions, she joined the cast of the ITV drama Wild at Heart in 2009, playing Georgina, the sister of a character previously portrayed by her sister Hayley Mills. She also guest-starred in two episodes of Hot in Cleveland as Philipa Scroggs, the mother of the character Joy, played by Jane Leeves.

Mills was married three times. Her first marriage, to Russell Alquist Jr., lasted from 1961 to 1964, and produced a son, Sean. Her second marriage, to Michael Miklenda, ran from 1975 to 1980, and the couple had a daughter, Melissa. She married Maxwell Caulfield, eighteen years her junior, in 1980. Mills became a naturalized United States citizen on October 10, 1975.