35 Facts About Hayley Mills

1.

Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills was born on 18 April 1946 and is an English actress.

2.

Hayley Mills was born on 18 April 1946, in Marylebone, London.

3.

Hayley 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, which co-starred her father, veteran British actor Sir John Mills.

4.

Bill Anderson, one of Walt Disney's producers, saw Tiger Bay and suggested that Hayley Mills be given the lead role in Pollyanna.

5.

Hayley Mills was offered the title role in Lolita by Stanley Kubrick, but her father turned it down.

6.

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; Hayley Mills grew too old for the part before the project could be revived.

7.

Hayley Mills had a change of pace with Sky West and Crooked, set in the world of gypsies, written by her mother and directed by her father, but it was not commercially successful.

8.

The success of "Let's Get Together" led to the release of a record album on Disney's Buena Vista label, Let's Get Together with Hayley Mills, which included her only other hit song, "Johnny Jingo".

9.

Hayley Mills felt her character castings led to her "repeating herself" with the studio.

10.

For Universal, Hayley Mills made another film with her father, The Truth About Spring, co-starring Disney regular James MacArthur as her love interest.

11.

Hayley Mills then provided the voice of the Little Mermaid for The Daydreamer.

12.

Shortly after The Truth About Spring, Hayley Mills appeared alongside her father and Hywel Bennett in director Roy Boulting's critically acclaimed film The Family Way, a comedy about a couple having difficulty consummating their marriage, featuring a score by Paul McCartney and arrangements by Beatles producer George Martin.

13.

Hayley Mills began a romantic relationship with Boulting and they eventually married, in 1971.

14.

Hayley Mills then starred as the protagonist of Pretty Polly, opposite famous Indian film actor Shashi Kapoor, in Singapore.

15.

Hayley Mills made another movie for Boulting, the controversial horror thriller Twisted Nerve in 1968, along with her Family Way co-star Hywel Bennett.

16.

Hayley Mills made a comedy, Take a Girl Like You, with Oliver Reed and made her West End debut in The Wild Duck in 1970.

17.

Hayley Mills worked for Boulting again on Mr Forbush and the Penguins, replacing the original female lead.

18.

In 1972 Hayley Mills again acted opposite Hywel Bennett in Endless Night along with Britt Ekland, Per Oscarsson and George Sanders.

19.

In 1981, Hayley 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.

20.

Hayley Mills then returned to America and made two appearances on The Love Boat in 1985, and an episode of Murder, Hayley Mills Wrote in 1986.

21.

Always welcomed at Disney, Hayley Mills narrated an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, sparking renewed interest in her Disney work.

22.

Hayley Mills starred as the title character in the Disney Channel-produced television series Good Morning, Miss Bliss in 1987.

23.

Hayley Mills recalled her childhood in the 2000 documentary film Sir John Hayley Mills' Moving Memories, which was directed by Marcus Dillistone and produced by her brother Jonathan.

24.

In 2007 she began appearing as Caroline in the ITV1 African vet drama Wild at Heart; her sister Juliet Hayley Mills was a guest star in series 4 of the drama.

25.

In 2010, Hayley Mills appeared in Mandie and the Cherokee Treasure, based on one of the popular Mandie novels of Lois Gladys Leppard.

26.

Hayley Mills made her stage debut in a 1969 West End revival of Peter Pan.

27.

In 1997, Mills starred in the US national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I In 2001, Mills starred as Desiree Armfeldt in a production of "A Little Night Music" in Seattle, Washington.

28.

Hayley Mills starred in the 2018 Off-Broadway run of Isobel Mahon's Party Face at City Center.

29.

In 1966, while filming The Family Way, 20-year-old Hayley Mills met 53-year-old director Roy Boulting.

30.

Hayley Mills had a second son, Jason Lawson, born in July 1976, during a relationship with actor Leigh Lawson.

31.

Hayley Mills wrote the preface to the book, The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking, published in 1984.

32.

In 1988, Mills co-edited, with then-partner Marcus Maclaine, the book My God, which consisted of brief letters from celebrities on their beliefs, or lack thereof, regarding God and the afterlife.

33.

Hayley Mills had surgery and started, but quickly abandoned, chemotherapy after only three sessions because of the severity of the side-effects.

34.

Hayley Mills told Good Housekeeping magazine in January 2012 that she had fully recovered.

35.

Hayley Mills published a memoir about her life and career, Forever Young: A Memoir, in September 2021.