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Hayley Mills Escapes The Parent Trap
From an Oscar at 14 to a New York stage debut this year
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Fourteen-year-old Mills in Disney's Pollyanna.
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Ensconced at a British boarding school, the youngest daughter of English actor Sir John Mills and writer Mary Hayley Bell didn't learn she had won an Oscar until months after the awards were handed out. "My parents told me it had been given to me, and that it was a great honor," recalls Mills, who says she understands why her folks kept her from the ceremony. "They wanted me to lead as normal a life as possible. I think there was real concern that I might get hideously puffed up." Besides, in their acting family, explains sister Juliet Mills, 58 (Tabitha on NBC's Passions), "we didn't set too much stock in critics or awards."
Receiving the Oscar "wasn't a major event in my life," says Mills
(outside the Manhattan theater where she is now performing.)
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After her Oscar -- an honorary one, for "outstanding juvenile performance" -- Mills, 53, soared to greater fame playing twins in 1961's The Parent Trap. At 19, she shed her wholesome image by appearing nude in The Family Way,and later moved in with its director Roy Boulting, 32 years her senior, whom she wed in 1971. Their son Crispian, 27, is lead singer of the band Kula Shaker. Divorced in 1977, Mills also has a son, Jason, 23, with actor Leigh Lawson. She kept working on TV and in theater, and in three Parent Trapsequels. Last month she made her New York City stage debut in Noël Coward's Suite in 2 Keys.As for her Oscar, which she claims has been misplaced, Mills says, "the older I got, the more I appreciated it."
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