“I tend to look on the bright side of life”
IT IS April 17, 1961, the night of the 33rd Oscar ceremony, and Shirley Temple takes to the stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium clutching the mini Oscar statuette for Best Juvenile Performance. She proceeds to announce that “the Academy tonight presents an Oscar to a young actress who has brought grace and talent to the screen; the star of Pollyanna – Miss Hayley Mills.”
Cue music and loud applause from the assembled gathering, but the 14-year-old recipient – who would turn 15 the next day – wasn’t there to receive her honour, or bask in the applause of Hollywood’s leading lights. Instead she was thousands of miles away in England, “fast asleep in a freezing cold boarding school dormitory, totally unaware of the honour being bestowed”.
A pattern had been set and, as Hayley recalls in her candid, recently published autobiography, “for much of my childhood career, I was like a passenger, passively sleepwalking through so many incredible experiences, never completely aware or in control of my life.”
As she progressed through her teens towards adulthood Hayley lived a Peter Pan existence, constantly pressured to remain, as the title of her book says, Forever Young. In doing so she would experience crippling shyness, doubts about her appearance and romantic disappointment, not uncommon in adolescents, but magnified by the unrelenting public gaze, which in turn led to depression and a brief bout of bulimia.
As Hayley puts it, “the sole purpose of every young girl should be to become a happy, strong
