"Born On The Same Day As Hayley Mills"

an interview with Hayley Mills conducted by

Beauregard Houston-Montgomery, excerpted from his unusual

book entitled POUF PIECES, published in India by Hanuman Books.

At first I thought writing for magazines would be more fun than I could

stand. It became more than I could stand, period. I was poorly paid to plug

advertisers. I was besieged by publicists to glorify their not very goods.

By deadline, I was deadened.

One day a publicist called about a terrible movie. Being one step ahead,

(my forward foot, as usual, planted firmly in a pile of shit), I knew that

one of the movie's actors was Hayley Mills. I have always been fondly fascinated

by Hayley Mills. We were born on the same day.

I begged the publicist to arrange an interview, which, due to my unusual

enthusiasm, she reluctantly did. She was concerned that editors would not

be interested. I reassured her that Hayley Mills had been the Shirley Temple of the

Baby Boomers, and editors cater to these constant consumers.

I called Hayley at home in suburban London, inadvertently (due to deadline)

interrupting her family holiday. She was nonetheless receptively civilized,

patiently dealing for well over an hour with questions that were at times

cloying and at other times impertinent. Transcribing her tape, I liked Hayley

better than ever. She seemed to have somehow survived Mr. Disney, and

subsequent devastations, with dignity.

Editors were not interested. In a glossy, disposable world, Miss Mills, without

a momentary profit to promote, was yesterday's refuse. If I was

disillusioned by my superiors, I had been inspired by my conversation with

Hayley, and I wrote my impressions anyway.

Hayley Mills is to the Populuxe period what Shirley Temple is to the Depression. Like

Miss Temple, she waxes nostalgic about her child stardom. Unlike Miss

Temple, her acting career is still active. She has become neither a plump

old Republican woman, nor, as has been incorrectly rumored, a member of the

Hare Krishna sect.

Daughter of the actor Sir John Mills, Hayley effortlessly stepped from playing

behind to in front of the cameras, making a dazzling cinema debut at the

unofficial age of 13, in the tensely tender film TIGER BAY. In the next few

years, she teasingly transcended sugar schlock in such beautifully produced

Disney indulgences as POLLYANNA and THE PARENT TRAP.

Hayley instinctively reinvented Pollyanna, an archaically saccharine little

ninny who glorified terminal optimism playing "The Glad Game," via such

contemporary perversities as picking her nose. She laughed aghast at this

recollection, exclaiming, "I don't remember picking my nose in POLLYANNA,"

adding the adult afterthought, "Someone should have slapped my hands." How

did she approach this fondly remembered role? "I simply learned my lines. I

was basically still a child. I didn't have any sort of method. I just loved

going to the studio every day and putting on the clothes... As I got older, I

realized it was far too easy in the beginning. As I became more complex as

a person, that simple process also became more complex. It's a struggle to

get back to the simplicity one has in the beginning."

If there is no Anger (Kenneth or otherwise) attached to her days at Disney, everything

came up drastically Daisy Clover during the latter part of Mills' adolescence.

Hayley describes that period as "tortuous." Her identity crisis peaked around the

time she starred with her father and Dame Edith Evans in Ross Hunter's

glossy white-wash of Enid Bagnold's THE CHALK GARDEN. "The spontaneity I

had as a child went... I became acutely aware of what I was doing, which is

never very much fun. I don't like watching THE CHALK GARDEN, or any films I

made during that period, because I can see what I was feeling. It makes me

terribly uncomfortable."

Between pictures "I was completely incarcerated in an English boarding

school where I'd hang out the window shouting at any man who'd infrequently

come in sight." As if to escape all this self-conscious confinement to

perpetual pre-adolescence, Mills soon started an affair with, and later

married, a man 33 years her senior, the well-established English

producer-director Roy Boulting. Wed in 1971, they conceived a son,

Crispian, who is currently 16. Professionally and personally, this period

shattered Mills' immaculate image, producing such charming successes as THE

FAMILY WAY (in which Boulting directed her in a nude scene), mixed with

interesting failures. Hayley doesn't' discuss the awful ones. "I don't think

it's fair, because it isn't just me involved. I draw a veil over those.

There are lots of veils," she adds, laughing.

This pattern of hits and misses continued beyond her breakup with Boulting,

and throughout her next lengthy liaison with actor Leigh Lawson. This

produced another son, Ace, now a teenager. Lawson (who later married

Twiggy) and Mills' relationship dried up concurrently with Hayley's career; the

latter parched by a shortage of juicy roles. "I tell newcomers to keep

working. You learn, you're seen, and it begets work. But when I try to live

by that, I find it extremely difficult. I know from experience that when

I'm involved in something I don't believe in, I can't be very good in it.

It becomes more difficult as you get older, particularly for a woman, to

find subjects that inspire you. I'm afraid I tend to wait for things I

really want to do, which is why over the last ten years I've had rather a

low profile. I've worked quite a lot in the theater, but there was little else to

entice me away from my two children, who were growing up and needing me at

home. Though many actresses manage to work and bring up well-adjusted

children, my tie was too strong." When asked which actresses she was

referring to, we both drew a blank.

Instead of playing Mommie Dearest during this barren private and

professional period, Mills turned transcendental. "I haven't joined the Hare

Krishna movement," she said in tribute to the tabloids. "I've spent quite a

lot of time with some devotees of that movement, and as a result I've

learned a lot about Eastern spiritual philosophy. It's the best thing that

ever happened to me. I cleaned up my act, as they say. I must say the

reason I'm still in this business, apart from the fact I love acting, is

that it is a way of communicating something worthwhile. I've been given a

great deal in my life, and it's a way of putting something back in. Instead

of being crushed by disappointments, you must learn and move ahead."

This spiritual affirmation of her priorities has Hayley on a holy roll.

Privately, she is involved in a spousal relationship with singer Marcus

Maclaine, who is the big brother of that perpetual juvenile hunk-thespian

Maxwell Caufield, who happens to be married to Hayley's big sister, actress

Juliette Mills. This gets somewhat less confusing upon realizing that, being Mr.

Caufield's older brother, Mr. Maclaine might actually be over 21. When I

congratulated her on the length of their relationship, Hayley laughed and

commented, "I said four years, Beauregard, not forty."

Professionally, T.V. has beckoned, with PBS's exquisite THE FLAME TREES OF

THICKA, Disney's quickie Parent Trap ad infinitum and the obligatory

MURDER, SHE WROTE. Mills also co-starred with Peter Ustinov and Lauren Bacall

in the Agatha Christie feature, APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH. I asked if the

reputedly belligerent Bacall had been as problematic as Rosalind Russell.

In her autobiography, "Life is a Banquet", Russel intimated 20-year old Hayley

(with whom she co-starred in THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS) had been an hors

d'oeuvre who gave her indigestion: "another overripe adolescent... demon. She

used to stick out her tongue whenever I passed... bursting at the seams with

repressed sexuality." Having never heard of the book, Hayley seemed genuinely

dismayed. "I was always rather in awe of Miss Russell. It wasn't as if we

became great mates, but I honestly can't remember a time when we had any

trouble. She was treated with enormous respect by everyone." This

diplomatic version seems in keeping with Mills' magnanimity about Bacall, who

she says is wonderful. "The one thing she hates more than anything is

bullshit. Unfortunately, there's a lot of bullshit in this business." Hayley Mills

stated this with the same unaffectedness with which she picked her nose in

POLLYANNA. Having since reacquainted herself with the rules of "The Glad

Game," it was a vast relief to find this Pollyanna is still a pisser.

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