Hayley Mills

Acting for Animals

Juliet Gellatley talks to one of Viva!’s best-known founder supporters

The old saying that time flies came home with a thud when I pulled into the drive of Hayley Mills’ house in Hampton, Middlesex – just a short distance from Henry VIII’s beautiful Hampton Court Palace. It was nine years since I’d last visited – for one of my first-ever celebrity interviews. So, in a sense, the house was a little bit of my history but I knew it was now up for sale.

Although on a busy road, the period white house, with its long gravel drive, has a secret feel about it. The large, mature gardens are not overlooked and they’re obviously well used – nothing park-like about them. As we talked, we wandered from garden to drawing room, with its vibrant colours and gleaming antique furniture, into the kitchen and finished up in the dining room. It’s a beautiful house but more than anything it feels like what it is – a family home.

Hayley has lived here for more than 20 years so it is an important part of her life. With it will go the scene of a million memories, including the childhood years of her two sons Crispian and Ace. Something big must have changed in her life for her to do this. Was retirement on the cards?

Hayley seems barely to have changed over the years and is still the same petite, attractive woman who has always supported Viva! – just as warm and friendly as ever. She laughed at the suggestion of retirement.

“If you retire you stop earning money and I need to work for my living. I’ve never been a rich woman who could afford to just sit back and prune the roses and I don’t really want to do that. I’ve acted since I was 12 and I can’t imagine stopping.”

It clearly runs in the family as Hayley’s father, Sir John Mills, is now 92 and still acting. So, if it’s not retirement, what is it? Hayley began to list the reasons why she’s selling up but I could tell these didn’t provide her main motivation.

“I’ve always wanted to work in the theatre in New York but I haven’t done it because my children are here, my parents are here and my house is here. But I do love the frenetic activity of New York. Most of my work seems to be in the US so now my sons are older – Crispian is married and lives in Bath and Ace has his flat in London – I think now’s the time to do what I want to do.”

Okay, but is there one reason which is more important than the rest?

“Well, yes! I met someone when I was doing the The King and I tour. I have a man in my life – the love of my life.”

As Hayley speaks, her face breaks into a smile so warm and so full of pleasure that anyone can see that this man, whoever he is, is someone special.

“He’s Indian, Indian-American – a Parsee. He was born in Bombay, educated in India and America and he now lives in New York.” It was obvious that nothing was going to stop Hayley talking about her man 3,500 miles away, as if doing so brought them closer.

“He was in the show and it’s the first time he’s ever been in a musical. He’s called Firdous Banji and he’s a fabulous, actor – a one off, wonderful. Although Parsees originated in Iran and tend to love meat but he gave up eating it about three years ago and thank god he walked into my life.”

If anyone knows about acting, it’s Hayley Mills. Lesley, who works for Viva!, happens to be a Hayley Mills fan and has all her films on video. Before the interview I sat and watched some of them. Tiger Bay is a gritty black and white thriller set around the Bute Town docks of Cardiff and Hayley’s co-star was the incredibly handsome Horst Buchholtz – at least he was 32 years ago when the film was made. In fact, Hayley fell madly in love with him at the time.

A film set is a stressful place with highly-paid bodies everywhere – from the director to the chief grip, camera operator to the gaffer – and all those other weird job titles like best boy, sparks, clapper loader and focus puller. Time is money and the pressure on everyone to get it right first time is huge – most of all the actors. When the set goes silent and the director calls ‘action’, they are on their own.

It was into this very macho, exclusive world that 12-year-old Hayley Mills walked as the star – and just did it. She acted brilliantly, as though the whole thing came entirely naturally and, according to her dad’s memoirs, she did it without a flicker of nerves and hummed to herself the whole time she wasn’t speaking. When her father asked the director if it was a problem he replied: “Just keep her humming.” The film won her a British Academy Golden Bear award. So, to call Hayley a consummate professional is simply stating a fact.

Hayley feeds the ducks for the press on Piedmont Park, Atlanta, at the launch of Viva!USA

Of course it wasn’t a one off and when she crossed the Atlantic to Hollywood, the pressure was even greater. In the Disney film The Parent Trap she starred twice – as twins, each with a different accent. For most of the film she had no one to bounce off, delivering her lines to empty space. And then she had to do it all in reverse for the second character, remembering all the right inflections. It was done faultlessly and she was still only 14. There was a string of other movies, including Polyanna with Karl Malden.

Much of the Mills’ family history has been captured in a truly fascinating book by her father. Called Still Memories – an Autobiography in Photography (Hutchinson, £20) it is a photographic history of British – and to some extent Hollywood – cinema. Sir John always carried a camera with him and used it on and off the set. There are some amazingly historic shots that include every great actor you’ve ever known – and some very candid ones, like Rex Harrison with his finger up the bottom of an alabaster Greek god. And there’s the sad, tearful, screwed up face of Hayley on the set of Polyanna after her dad had told her she was acting like a cabbage. It must have worked because she went on to win a Special Oscar for her performance.

It is sheer luck that these photographs survived to go into print. They had long since been forgotten but her brother Jonathan came across them in his attic. The only person who knew their history was Sir John but his eyesight has almost gone.

“They spent the whole of last summer projecting the pictures onto a screen with my father just two inches away, trying to see who was in them and what he remembered about them. It’s been a lovely project for him and it’s made an enormous difference to mum (Mary Hayley Bell), who is 89 and was beginning to slip away from us. It’s jogged her memory to such a degree that she’s started wearing her glasses again and takes an interest in life. It’s been a real catalyst for her because she was very lost to us. It’s fantastic.”

Like her father, Hayley has never stopped working. She has recently completed the fateful, year-long tour of the US as Anna in The King and I. But it wasn’t all glamour.

“After about nine months I lost 14lbs and was simply burnt out. I couldn’t sleep or eat and I got so tired I just didn’t know what I was doing. The schedule was relentless and I felt just like a little mouse on a wheel. I broke my toe twice in the same year because I was so tired I became clumsy. I couldn’t wear my normal shoes and had to do the polka with this broken toe sticking through a ballet shoe. The dresses went down to the floor to cover it and I looked like a dancing dwarf.

“You do a show Wednesday, Thursday and Friday but on Saturday and Sunday you do two shows a day. Monday usually means interminable hours of travelling and on Tuesday you have all the interviews with press, television and radio in the new city.

“Physically it’s gruelling but it was also wonderful because I was working, doing a fabulously beautiful show full of enchanting children and so I just kept going.”

Having experienced the difficulties of being a veggie in provincial America, I wondered how she’d managed.

“I did miss the wonderful vegetarian food you can buy in Britain. The first thing I would do in a new city was to get my PA to find out where the best vegetarian restaurant was – if there was one! Often there wasn’t so much of the time I had to eat hotel food and believe me, there is a limit to how many times you can eat green salad and Portobello mushrooms, which is all that ever seems to be on offer in some towns. In the big cities, of course, there’s often a wonderful choice. But the most important thing about it was – I did meet the love of my life!”

That was clearly a far bigger compensation than even the most gourmet vegetarian menu could ever be.

With Firdous also being a veggie, it keeps the family tradition going. Crispian – who has just released his first solo album after the break up of the band Kula Shaker – and his wife Joe are Hindus and strict vegetarians – in Crispian’s case since he was 11. Ace is almost there. Again thanks to Viva!’s Lesley, I was able to fill in a piece of family history. Hayley’s aunt, Annette Mills, who presented Muffin the Mule on children’s TV years ago – when screens were minuscule and vertical hold almost unheard of – was vegan. I wondered if she had influenced Hayley. “Good Lord, was she really? I had no idea. I remember going to the studio to see her doing Muffin the Mule but she died when I was eight.”

So obviously that wasn’t the reason. Then what was?

“Whenever I met anyone who was vegetarian, I was always fascinated. I wanted to know what they ate, whether it was fattening and if it made them constipated. The actor Nicholas Jones was vegetarian and very much on a spiritual path. He didn’t drink, got up early, meditated and was very austere and celibate. But I admired him because he was the first person I’d ever met who really believed something and was prepared to put it into practice.

“But I think the crunch was in 1982 when I watched The Animals Film. I was alone in the house and it was such a shocking experience – devastating. I cried all night. There have been some big changes since then and there seems to be an enormous groundswell of awareness from people who haven’t questioned things for years. We used to be told what we should buy and what we should eat but now people are saying ’hang on’, what exactly is in this?’ – and then demanding changes.”

Of course, what gives the truth to Hayley’s beliefs is the extraordinary reaction of the British public – and increasingly the US public – to genetic modification. But there still seems to be a hard core who refuse to respond to animal cruelty and environmental collapse. What lies behind their refusal to listen?

“Every person who smokes tears the cellophane wrapping off a packet of cigarettes that says ‘smoking cigarettes can kill you’ and they light up. There is a stubborn, pig-headed blindness in us all. We only see those things we want to see.”

Hayley never delivers her views aggressively or as a challenge but in a considered, thoughtful, gentle way. The last time I interviewed her she spoke at length about karma – every action having a reaction. In the case of humans there would, she said, ultimately be a payback time for their gluttony and greed. Does she still believe it?

“Oh yes, I think it’s scientific fact. People talk about karma as if a hand of god is going to come down on you if you’ve been behaving badly. In fact, we create our own karma – good and bad. Our actions today may well cause us suffering tomorrow and vice versa. Hopefully, there will be enough effort put in by enough people that we’ll ameliorate the effects of the bad actions, which are starving the land and destroying animals.

But it does seem that we have to go right to the very edge before we recognise what’s right in front of our eyes.

“We’re all frightened of change because we’ve invested a lot in things as they are. I know that selling this house involves huge change. What’s going to fill the void that it will leave in my life? The memories of my children running in the garden with their white hair. They grew up here and I feel safe because I identify with the place. Why am I leaving it? Who am I without this place? When I’ve been away and I come back to my little retreat I feel secure and happy. But there is excitement in letting it go.

	Hayley and Juliet Gellatley at Viva!’s Richmond, Surrey, children’s rally against live exports

“As a species, we just have to accept that we’re heading off down a path to destruction and if enough people recognise this then we can change it. Fortunately, Viva! has become a force to be reckoned with because you are making a difference. You have got information out to who knows how many people and who knows what effect that is having on those lives. You don’t have to be a huge organisation. It’s incredible what you’ve done. There’s nothing more powerful than an idea that comes along at the right time.”

I don’t quite know how to respond to such generous praise but I am pleased – very pleased – that the actions of the thousands of people who make up Viva! are being recognised in such a fulsome way.

“I think that being a vegetarian gives people a more gentle nature, makes them more compassionate with greater respect for life. If I value all life, then I’m not going to put it through torment. Doing that brutalises people and when it’s for meat it brutalises those who eat it. Parents don’t tell their children where their hamburgers and sausages come from and neither do those nauseating ads with animated, talking ducks and chickens, cows and lambs. If children knew what we know, there would be far more vegetarians because children are very ethical.

‘They love their dogs and cats, their hamsters and mice. They don’t want to smash their pet rabbit over the head and put it in a pie! It’s this feeling of being separate from the animal kingdom that has destroyed our sense of responsibility.

“We’ve created two kinds of animals. The animals that we don’t eat, we hold up as something special and the ones that we do are just dumb, stupid animals that are only there for us to kill – they have only instincts and don’t even feel pain. I guess it’s all because people are terrified of knowing just how smart and wonderful they really are.”

So does Hayley believe there’s hope for the future?

“Oh yes! But it is a desperately materialistic world and we need to get back to our essential spiritual selves. At last I am meeting people with hope – people who are doing something positive – and we are beginning to get the balance and harmony back. If we act now we can – we will – save our world.”