Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills (born April 18, 1946) is an English actress. The daughter of actor Sir John Mills and writer Mary Hayley Bell and younger sister of actress Juliet Mills, she began her acting career as a child and was hailed as a promising newcomer, winning the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in J. Lee Thompson’s crime drama Tiger Bay (1959), with her father (the first of many collaborations) and Horst Buchholz. She would also receive the Academy Juvenile Award for and Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year for her performance in Disney’s Pollyanna (1960), with Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, Richard Egan, Nancy Olson, Adolphe Menjou, Donald Crisp, Agnes Moorehead, and Kevin Corcoran.
She would appear in 5 more Disney films in her early career: David Swift’s The Parent Trap (1961), with Maureen O’Hara, Brian Keith, Joanna Barnes, Charlie Ruggles, Cathleen Nesbitt, Una Merkel, and Crahan Denton; Robert Stevenson’s In Search of the Castaways (1962), with Maurice Chevalier, George Sanders, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Michael Anderson, Keith Hamshere, and Antonio Cifariello; James Neilson’s Summer Magic (1963), with Burl Ives, Dorothy McGuire, Deborah Walley, Eddie Hodges, Jimmy Mathers, Michael J. Pollard, Wendy Turner, and Merkel; The Moon-Spinners (1964), with Eli Wallach, Peter McEnery, Joan Greenwood, Irene Papas, and Pola Negri; and That Darn Cat! (1965), with Dean Jones, Dorothy Provine, Roddy McDowall, Neville Brand, Frank Gorshin, Elsa Lanchester, and Ed Wynn.
Mills received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best British Actress for Bryan Forbes’s Whistle Down the Wind (1961), with Bernard Lee and Alan Bates. Other films in the 1960s include Ronald Neame’s The Chalk Garden (1964), with Deborah Kerr; Richard Thorpe’s The Truth About Spring (1965), with James MacArthur, David Tomlinson, Lionel Jeffries, Harry Andrews, Niall MacGinnis, and Lionel Murton; Sky West and Crooked (1965), with Ian McShane, Annette Crosbie, and Laurence Naismith; Ida Lupino’s The Trouble with Angels (1966), with Rosalind Russell,
Binnie Barnes, Gypsy Rose Lee, Camilla Sparv, Mary Wickes, and June Harding; Roy Boulting’s The Family Way (1966), with Hywel Bennett, Marjorie Rhodes, Murray Head, and Avril Angers; Guy Green’s Pretty Polly (1967), with Shashi Kapoor, Trevor Howard, and Brenda De Banzie; and Twisted Nerve (1968), with Bennett, Billie Whitelaw, Phyllis Calvert, and Frank Finlay.
Films in the 1970s include Take a Girl Like You (1970), with Oliver Reed, Noel Harrison, Sheila Hancock, John Bird, and Ami MacDonald; Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971), with John Hurt, Dudley Sutton, and Tony Britton; Sidney Gilliat’s Endless Night (1972), with Britt Ekland, Per Oscarsson, Bennett, and George Sanders; Sidney Hayes’s What Changed Charley Farthing? (1975), with Doug McClure and Jeffries; Deadly Strangers (1975), with Simon Ward and Sterling Hayden; and The Kingfisher Caper (1975), with David McCallum and Jon Cypher.
After brief hiatus, Mills returned to acting with the miniseries The Flame Trees of Thika (1981), with Holly Aird, David Robb and Ben Cross. She would also reprise her Parent Trap roles in 3 TV movie sequels: The Parent Trap II (1986), with Tom Skerritt; Parent Trap III (1989), and Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon (1989), the latter 2 with Barry Bostwick. She also appeared in the film Appointment with Death (1988), with Peter Ustinov, Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher, John Gielgud, Piper Laurie, Jenny Seagrove and David Soul.
Later roles include TV movie Back Home (1990), with Brenda Bruce and Jean Anderson; a voice role in A Troll in Central Park (1994), with Dom DeLuise, Cloris Leachman, Charles Nelson Reilly, Phillip Glasser, Tawny Sunshine Glover, and Jonathan Pryce; 2B Perfectly Honest (2004), with Adam Trese, Andrew McCarthy, John Turturro, Michael Badalucco, Aida Turturro, and Robert Vaughn; Jonathan Miller’s Foster (2011), with Toni Collette, Ioan Gruffudd, Maurice Cole, Richard E. Grant, Anne Reid, and Daisy Beaumont; and Last Train to Christmas (2021), with Michael Sheen, Cary Elwes, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Phyllis Logan.
She also starred as the title character in the Disney Channel-produced television series Good Morning, Miss Bliss in 1987. The show was cancelled after 13 episodes and the rights were acquired by NBC, which reformatted the show into Saved by the Bell (1989 – 1993) without any further involvement from Mills. In recognition of her work with The Walt Disney Company, she was awarded the Disney Legends award in 1998.
Each review will be linked to the title below.
(*seen originally in theaters)
(**seen rereleased in theaters)
- So Well Remembered (1947) – directed by Edward Dmytryk – uncredited
- Tiger Bay (1959) – directed by J. Lee Thompson
- Pollyanna (1960) – directed by David Swift
- The Parent Trap (1961) – directed by David Swift
- Whistle Down the Wind (1961) – directed by Bryan Forbes
- In Search of the Castaways (1962) – directed by Robert Stevenson
- Summer Magic (1963) – directed by James Neilson
- The Chalk Garden (1964) – directed by Ronald Neame
- The Moon-Spinners (1964) – directed by James Neilson
- The Truth About Spring (1965) – directed by Richard Thorpe
- That Darn Cat! (1965) – directed by Robert Stevenson
- Sky West gand Crooked (1965) – directed by John Mills
- The Trouble with Angels (1966) – directed by Ida Lupino
- The Daydreamer (1966) – directed by Jules Bass
- The Family Way (1966) – directed by Roy Boulting
- A Matter of Innocence (1967) – directed by Guy Green
- Twisted Nerve (1968) – directed by Roy Boulting
- Take a Girl Like You (1970) – directed by Jonathan Miller
- Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971) – directed by Arne Sucksdorff, Alfred Viola (uncredited), & Roy Boulting (uncredited)
- Endless Night (1972) – directed by Sidney Gilliat
- What Changed Charley Farthing? (1975) – directed by Sidney Hayers
- Deadly Strangers (1975) – directed by Sidney Hayers
- The Kingfisher Caper (1975) – directed by Dirk DeVilliers
- The Flame Trees of Thika (1981) – directed by Roy Ward Baker – miniseries
- The Parent Trap II (1986) – directed by Ronald F. Maxwell – TV movie
- Appointment with Death (1988) – directed by Michael Winner
- The Parent Trap III (1989) – directed by Mollie Miller – TV movie
- Back Home (1989) – directed by Piers Haggard – TV movie
- Parent Trap: Hawaiian Honeymoon (1989) – directed by Mollie Miller – TV movie
- After Midnight (1990) – directed by Shani Grewal
- A Troll in Central Park (1994) – directed by Don Bluth & Gary Goldman
- 2B Perfectly Honest (2004) – directed by Randel Cole
- Stricken (2005) – directed by Jayce Bartok & Christopher J. Scott – short
- Mandie and the Cherokee Treasure (2010) – directed by Joy Chapman
- Foster (2011) – directed by Jonathan Newman
- Last Train to Christmas (2021) – directed by Julian Kemp
I Review Stuff 