Hayley Mills hits another stage of life

If you go . . .

By J. WYNN ROUSUCK © The Baltimore Sun
From Jan. 18, 1998

"Parents say, 'Now you've met Pollyanna.' And this child looks up to my face, 'My God! What has happened to Pollyanna?'" she said, scrunching her face into an imitation of a perplexed child.

What has happened is that Pollyanna is now Mrs. Anna, star of the national touring production of "The King and I," which opens Tuesday at the Kentucky Center for the Arts as part of the PNC Bank Broadway Series.

She's also 51, the mother of two grown sons and, for three decades, a theater actress in her native Britain. "In the minds of American audiences, I disappeared completely," she said, looking a mite tired as she sips tea from a foam cup at Washington's Kennedy Center, co-producer of the 1996 Tony Award-winning revival.

Those who know her only as Pollyanna or the matchmaking twins in "The Parent Trap" or the owner of "That Darned Cat" "are probably appalled that I've aged normally like everybody else," Mills said. In fact, she has aged more gracefully than most. Her pug nose seems more in proportion with her other features; she wears her wavy blond hair long, cascading below her shoulders.

"If you look, you can see the little face under there that used to be there. She's every bit as pretty as she ever was, but she's just grown up now," said Mary Rodgers, daughter of "King and I" composer Richard Rodgers.

During her years as a grown-up, Mills has worked fairly steadily on the British stage. About seven years ago she received a call from Australia about playing the starring role of governess to the royal children of Siam in "The King and I."

"I was absolutely flabbergasted," she recalled. "It took months for me to decide -- to pluck up the courage -- to do it, because I'd never sung a big musical like that before."

Granted, she had sung in the Disney films, and some of those films produced soundtrack albums. But her only musical as an adult, a show called "Trelawney of the Wells," was in the early 1970s.

What finally persuaded her to give "The King and I" a try was listening to the original cast album with Gertrude Lawrence, who created the role and suggested the idea for the musical to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

"She sang with an actress's kind of verve and emotion," Mills explained. "I personally really liked her voice, and the things that the critics, who were looking for a real full-out singer, criticized her for, didn't worry me. So I thought, 'You have to go out on a limb sometimes.' It was such a beautiful opportunity, such a wonderful show."

That decision led to a yearlong tour of Australia in "The King and I." Mary Rodgers, who is a director of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, flew to Australia to see that production five years ago. She came away so impressed that she was determined it come to America.

"I just thought it was the most spectacular production I'd ever seen (of 'The King and I'). It was so much more lavish and meticulously thought-out than the original. That was pretty lovely, too, but this was just spectacular," she recalled.

She also was impressed by Mills: "I thought she was such a wonderful actress, and I knew people would be eager to see her as a grown-up. There are lots of children who don't turn out to be awfully good in the business when they grow up, and she was just bliss.

When she began her career, at age 12, her father, acclaimed British actor John Mills, described her acting as "instinctive."

It's a quality she hopes she still has. But, she said, "I did go through a time when I did not trust my instincts because . . . I didn't really know who I was inside myself, and I doubted my ability. I questioned everything, and I became not such a good actress. . . . I felt I was repeating myself. That's why I went back to the theater."

When she speaks of going "back to the theater," Mills is referring to the family trade. Her father won an Oscar for "Ryan's Daughter," was knighted in 1976 and continues to act at 89. Her mother, author Mary Hayley Bell, acted before her marriage, then concentrated on writing. Older sister Juliet also is an actress; younger brother Jonathan is a screenwriter and producer.

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