(from Screen Album, 1961)

"Hayley Mills", said Louella Parsons, " is small, blonde, and not beautiful until she talks, and then her face lights up with such animation, there's a special kind of beauty about her." Just who is Hayley and what is she that all the world seems to share Miss Parsons' opinion? Well, Hayley's charm is partly genetic. Father John Mills is a top British star and Mary Hayley-Bell Mills, her mother, is a talented novelist-playwright. Hayley is accustomed to bright and amusing people: to the family farm in Sussex, England, her "Uncle Larry" (Olivier) would come and take her piggy-back riding. Her "Uncle Noel" (Coward) sent wonderful presents from all over the world. Hayley and the other Mills children (Juliet, also an actress, and schoolboy Jonathan) might have been spoiled by so much attention. They weren't because the Mills are a real family. Young Hayley was enthused at leaving Hollywood last December since it meant everyone, including dogs, cows, chickens, and the pony Annabelle, would be home for a proper Christmas. This Mills sense of fun and balance caused Karl Malden to observe Hayley as "The most relaxed actress I have ever known. Drama schools have whole courses on relaxing. Yet Hayley seems to relax naturally. It's a gift." In fact, Hayley wasn't always sure she wanted to be an actress. When asked what she wished to be some day, Hayley was likely to reply "a mother." Though she'd seen her father perform and thought him "quite wonderful," she still didn't understand sister Juliet's preoccupation with all "that make-believe stuff." But confronted with the offer to play in TIGER BAY, her first movie, a then twelve-year-old Hayley made a new decision: she would be a mother and an actress! One movie led to another - POLLYANNA - and a contract with Walt Disney. His words of praise for Hayley, currently starring in THE PARENT TRAP, are as glowing as her future - "An actress who will be more beautiful than Liz Taylor, more talented than any star in motion pictures today!"

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