Entertainment
Hayley Mills on losing her Oscar statuette: ‘There is a happy end to my sad story’
Hayley Mills is also sure TV can’t replace the magic of the flicks (Picture: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images / Metro.co.uk)
Academy Award winner Hayley Mills, 75, on gambling, why TV won’t replace film and the happy ending to her Oscar heartbreak.
Your new C5 drama, Compulsion, explores the perils of online gambling when people are thrust into desperate situations. Are you a gambling fan?
No, unlike my mother [the late screenwriter Mary Hayley Bell] and my sister [actress Juliet Mills], who love it.
Roulette! You can’t drag them away from the roulette table. It doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t get it. My sister even has a system.
Has it been a successful system over the years?
Yes, pretty good. She doesn’t do it in a huge way, just when she goes to Vegas or somewhere there is a casino.
Hayley began her career as a child actress (Picture: Kate Green/Getty Images)
Or even the horses – she’s lucky on the horses. I enjoy it as a one-off for a bit of fun but I’m more like my dad [Sir John Mills] who had a certain amount of money and when he’d lost that, he stopped.
He wasn’t going to give his hard-earned money away. I feel like that.
You’ve described Juliet as your rock. What do you most enjoy doing together?
Talking and laughing and walking and hanging out together. She lives in California but just being together doing anything.
She’s a great planner. She’s always coming up with wonderful ideas of things to do, whether it’s climbing a mountain or going to a spa or a concert.
She’s a wonderful girl.
How does your character, Miss Connie Bertram, and her Blue Regency Debt Solutions business fit into Compulsion?
The main character, played by Leanne Best, is a paramedic who has had a very traumatic experience with an accident, which shook her profoundly.
As a result of the trauma she became addicted to gambling. It’s odd that she should turn to that. She didn’t turn to alcohol. She didn’t turn to drugs. She didn’t fly off the handle and have endless affairs. It was escapism I suppose, really, and she needs the money.
Gambling is a mug’s game, isn’t it? Ultimately you lose. So her character, Jenny, needed money. The money wasn’t forthcoming from the bank so she turned to a loan shark. That’s my character.
How do you think Miss Bertram got into her line of work?
I think there is a bit of Connie Bertram’s make-up missing, to not be able to empathise with somebody else’s desperation, pain and misery.
Connie completely justifies what she does. She’s offering a service. Nobody else would give this girl the money that she needs.
I don’t think she feels any guilt or anything at all. This is what she does and she’s very good at it.
She’s pretty tough. She tells herself that if somebody gets into this terrible situation then they have no one but themselves to blame.
Hayley stars as Connie in Compulsion on Channel 5 (Picture: Channel 5)
She starred as both twins in the original Parent Trap in 1961 (Picture: Moviestore / REX / Shutterstock)
It’s revealed later that Leanne’s character was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, doing things like jumping out of planes. Have you ever tried that?
I would love to jump out of an aeroplane. My partner [actor Firdous Bamji] jumped out of one when we were in America.
I was so envious but I couldn’t do it in case I broke my neck as I had a show to do that night.
Was it more nerve-racking standing on the ground watching someone you love leap out of a plane?
I’m a great believer in things working out all right.
I sat in on all the training he had to do. Then he jumped out of the plane with somebody on his back. But he still had to jump out of an aeroplane into thin air.
Maybe I was thinking I would love to do it because I knew I didn’t have to.
Falling through the air is a bit like a first night. You just don’t know what’s going to happen.
Do you watch more television these days or do you still love going to the movies?
I don’t think television is ever going to take the place of movies and that experience.
You have a whole different approach to a film when you’ve sat down in the cinema. You’ve got that enormous screen and wonderful Dolby sound.
There is a focus you don’t have when you are at home because you go and have a cup of tea or have a pee and you pause it.
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How did this year’s dramatic Academy Awards compare to the year you won your Juvenile Oscar for Pollyanna? You didn’t attend but were there dramas on the night?
I didn’t know anything about it [she was at school in England so The Parent Trap’s singer/actress Annette Funicello accepted it].
But I’ve been given a new one as my little Oscar was stolen 30 years ago. In those days, they didn’t give children a full-size Oscar.
The first of these small-size statuettes was given to Shirley Temple. The last one was given to me in 1961.
It was Shirley Temple who was supposed to present it to me but I wasn’t there. So now I have this beautiful golden Oscar, full size.
So there is a happy end to my sad story of losing my little one.
Compulsion continues tonight, tomorrow and Friday at 9pm on Channel 5.
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