The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Flashback
Actor Hayley Mills reflects on making her first film, Tiger Bay, 63 years ago
This picture was taken on the first day of filming for
Tiger Bay , on 15 September 1958. I was 12 at the time, and it was the first film I appeared in. Tiger Bay changed my life completely: it made me a child star and kickstarted my career in acting – my work with Disney, in films like Pollyanna (1960) and The Parent Trap (1961), came afterwards.
My casting had happened quite by chance one Sunday earlier that year, when the film director J Lee Thompson came to our home in Sussex to speak to my father [the veteran actor Sir John Mills] about playing the detective inspector in the film.
Tiger Bay is a thriller set in Cardiff about a Polish seaman [played by Horst Buchholz, 24 at the time] who, when he returns home to discover his girlfriend has gone off with another man, shoots her in a fit of passion. The child in the story is Gillie Evans, a fiery, tomboyish character who witnesses the murder. I fell madly in love with Horst Buchholz; you never forget your first love.
Gillie was originally supposed to be a boy, but when Thompson saw me in the garden, impersonating TV jingles to a couple of kids, he decided he wanted me to play the part. He asked me at lunch; I was as keen as mustard. My mouth full of Yorkshire pudding, I exclaimed, ‘Yes, yes, I’d love to!’
Like Gillie, I was also a tomboy; I lived in baggy old trousers and wellington boots, and spent my time climbing trees. I started boarding school aged nine, and in school plays I was often given the parts of scruffy boys. Right from the beginning, playing somebody else was the greatest fun.
The first day on set was like the first day of school, because so many of the cast were children. I made friends with some of them, including Logan’s Run actor Michael Anderson Jr, who was then 15. Michael and I used to drop itching powder and stink bombs out of my window – we behaved rather badly and had a lot of laughs together.
On set, I took to acting like a duck to water. After all, I had grown up going to film studios with my father; I loved the magic of it all, and I would play on the deserted sets for hours. I found it all absolutely riveting, and I learnt a lot from my father by osmosis. It was wonderful to work with him, and in our scenes together we both become our characters – then we went back to being ourselves again. It was the simplest thing.
We filmed for three months, eight hours a day. I had to take time off school; I had a tutor on set. When I returned to school, after the initial curiosity, everyone just got on with their lives.
The film was a success, and the reviewers liked my performance [which won me the Bafta Award for Most Promising Newcomer]. When I went to the premiere in London, in 1959, it was very exciting. But when I saw my face projected on the screen I couldn’t stop laughing; I almost became hysterical. My father kept kicking me. I’m sure it was nerves and embarrassment, but I genuinely thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen.
In the picture above I am relaxing with my father, J Lee Thompson and other members of the cast, but really I was just a little girl leaning on her father’s shoulders. I had a similar adolescence to everyone else’s – the only difference was I had to cope with being in the limelight. But my parents helped me, and I’d seen fame growing up – everywhere I went with my father people recognised him, and he handled it with grace and humility. I have always tried to follow in his footsteps.