Forever Young

There are countless coming-of-age memoirs out there, but how many unfold at the House of Mouse? The English actress Hayley Mills's fulsome Forever Young is certainly weighted toward the six films that she made for Disney, but it's also a disarmingly forthright look at a jobbing actor's life.

Acting was a logical career path for Mills: her father, John, was a celebrated thespian; her mother, Mary Hayley Bell, a playwright and novelist whose stories occasionally made it to the screen. In 1959, young Mills starred in the British crime drama Tiger Bay, which was seen by Bill Anderson, a senior producer for Walt Disney, who was having trouble casting the lead in his movie Pollyanna. "At the age of twelve my life was tipped on its head and I was plunged, literally, into Wonderland," writes Mills.

This should not be mistaken for a grievance. While it wasn't easy for Mills to go through the typical adolescent trials in the public eye, Forever Young--which wraps up in the early 1970s, when she's a new mother leaving a bad marriage--is refreshingly light on rancor. Mills is especially winning on the subject of her post-Disney triumphs and missteps in film and theater in and around Swinging London. Forever Young swirls with stories about the procession of famous people that Mills has worked with, including, of course, Uncle Walt, whom she adored but whose company's squeaky-clean image cost her a plum role in a non-Disney film: "Lolita was politely turned down," reports Mills. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

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