Was She Everyone’s Favorite Growing Up, or What? Now Hayley Mills Tells All

As I picked up Hayley Mills’ memoir, Forever Young, tried to recall when I had last been so excited about a celebrity. Ah yes, it was a few years back, when Mills was making her first stage appearance in New York, in a rather sitcomish off-Broadway play. Since I cover theatre, I not only grabbed a press seat, but asked for an interview with Mills. There was little press interest in her at the time, but there were a lot of middle-aged women lining up to see how one of their childhood idols was looking and acting in her 70s.

Someone once said you never want to meet your childhood idols.

We spoke on the phone, and Hayley was delightful and expressed many of the same sentiments as are in the book. “I loved the Disney Studio, and Walt, and there was never any exploitation,” she told me. “Still, I had to forfeit friends, as I was always leaving my boarding school and struggling to catch up. There was a price to pay, and that kind of fame can be very isolating. I am only grateful I didn’t become famous in the time of social media.”