6 • The Sunday Times Magazine
Crispian
Growing up, random strange men behind shop
counters would confide: “Your mum was my first love.”
I used to think, how many boyfriends did she have?
I didn’t realise it was fan love — she’d been a working
actress since she was 12.
Mum made a huge number of very popular movies
from the Sixties onwards [including six films for Walt
Disney] and earned a great deal of money, but because
she was a minor the fruits of her labour were put in a
trust fund until she came of age. The Inland Revenue
ransacked it on her 21st birthday and helped itself to a
whopping 91 per cent. Amazingly this didn’t make her
bitter. She has always tended to be tremendously hard
on herself but unswervingly enthusiastic and generous
about others and life.
I am sure Walt Disney recognised that quality in her
when he cast her as Pollyanna [1960] and why audiences
continue to have huge affection for her. Walt once told
her: “I just want to show people the best in themselves.”
That’s her too. She has a magical quality you can’t quite
put your finger on. I sometimes think the positivity and
optimism is a bit of self-defence: by focusing on the
positives she averts the pain.
Mum came from this very British family [Hayley’s
father was the veteran actor John Mills, her mother the
writer Mary Hayley Bell]. They had an easygoing,
spiritual view of life. The sentiments “mustn’t grumble”
and “always be grateful” were highly valued. Mum has
always taken the position that she’s lucky, but her
background didn’t protect her from difficult times.
Part of the reason I encouraged Mum to write her
memoir [Forever Young] was because I wanted to hear
the whole story. I thought it would be therapeutic for
both of us. We all knew about her mum’s alcoholism. But
back then people had meetings at ten in the morning
with cigarettes and whisky, so it was kind of normalised.
The struggle to grow up, be confident and well adjusted
isn’t easy for anyone. Mum did it in public, as part of a
famous family. She didn’t go looking for fame, it came
and found her, and the higher her star ascended, the
more shy and introverted she became.
Mum left my dad [the director Roy Boulting] when
I was about two and moved around a lot for work, so I
went to a mix of private, state and international schools.
At my first primary school in Southall [in west London]
most of my friends were Punjabi and I’m sure that had
a huge effect on me musically. When I was about ten
years old Mum started taking me to Sunday feasts at
the Hare Krishna temple. It was the first time I had
heard devotional kirtan singing and sacred Indian
music, which pretty much changed my life and shaped
the identity of Kula Shaker [Crispian’s psychedelic rock
group, which had a No 1 album and several Top Ten
singles in the late 1990s].
Every family has its recurring themes. In ours it was
romantic idealism. Mum is still an incurable romantic
and an idealist; relationships haven’t always been easy
for her. But when a family is tight, you get through it.Hayley
I grew up during Hollywood’s glory days, but it didn’t
always seem glamorous to me. I remember swimming
in [the British film star] Stewart Granger’s pool and
watching as the tissues I’d used to stuff my bikini top
floated around me. I got my first period on the set“I won an Oscar for Pollyanna, but
my parents never mentioned it. On
the night I was in a freezing dorm”
Hayley & Crispian Mills
The actress and her son, the Kula Shaker singer, on losing the fortune she made as a child star
Main: Hayley, 75,
and Crispian, 48, at
Hayley’s home in
southwest London.
Above: Hayley in the
1960 film Pollyanna.
Right: with Crispian
in 1974RELATIVE VALUES