Donna Mills

Donna Mills (born Donna Jean Miller; December 11, 1940) is an American actress. She began her television career in 1966 with a recurring role on The Secret Storm, and in the same year appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's comedy Don't Drink the Water. She made her film debut the next year in The Incident. She then starred for three years on the soap opera Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1967–70), before starring as Tobie Williams, the girlfriend of Clint Eastwood's character in the 1971 thriller Play Misty for Me. Mills played the female lead in the heist film Murph the Surf (1975), and had starring roles in a number of made-for-television movies during the 1970s.

In 1980, Mills landed the role of Abby Cunningham on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing, and was a regular on the show until 1989. For this role, she won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Villainess three times, in 1986, 1988, and 1989. She has since starred in several TV movies, including The World's Oldest Living Bridesmaid (1990), Dangerous Intentions (1995), The Stepford Husbands (1996), Ladies of the House (2008) and Ladies of the '80s: A Divas Christmas (2023). In 2014, she joined the cast of the long-running daytime soap opera General Hospital as Madeline Reeves, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Guest Performer in a Drama Series. In 2023, she starred in the Lifetime limited series V.C. Andrews' Dawn. Mills also appeared in the films Joy (2015), Nope (2022) and Origin (2023).

Mills was born Donna Jean Miller in Chicago, to Bernice (née Lantz), a housewife, and Ambrose, a computer analyst for Union Oil. She has one brother, Donald, who is 10 years her senior. Raised in Norwood Park, Mills attended Garvy Elementary School and Taft High School; one of her classmates was Jim Jacobs, co-creator of Grease, who based the character of Sandy on her.

Mills attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she was a member of Delta Gamma sorority. She completed one year of course work, then left to pursue a dancing career, gaining some stage experience in summer stock productions. Her first professional acting role was in a production of Come Blow Your Horn at the Drury Lane Theater in Chicago. She later was cast in a touring production of My Fair Lady, which brought her to New York City. Before she got a job on TV, Mills supported herself as a secretary at Popular Mechanics magazine.

Mills' parents retired to Florida, while her brother makes his home in Colorado.

Mills began her acting career on television playing a nightclub singer named Rocket on the Manhattan-based CBS daytime soap opera, The Secret Storm in 1966. She later appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's comedy Don't Drink the Water as the Sultan of Bashir's wife. Following this, she made her big screen debut in the neo noir crime-thriller film, The Incident (1967), co-starring alongside Martin Sheen, Beau Bridges, Ed McMahon and Thelma Ritter. The film received positive reviews from critics and was successful in a box office. In the fall of 1967, Mills gained a regular role as ex-nun Laura Donnelly on the new CBS daytime soap opera, Love is a Many Splendored Thing. She left the series in 1970 and relocated to the West Coast, thereupon making her primetime TV debut in an episode of the Western series, Lancer.

In 1971, Mills starred alongside Clint Eastwood and Jessica Walter in the psychological thriller film Play Misty for Me, directed by Eastwood for Universal Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics and was a financial success for the studio. During 1971–72, she starred in the short-lived sitcom The Good Life with Larry Hagman, who later guest-starred on Knots Landing as J. R. Ewing from the show's sister series Dallas. She signed a contract with Universal in 1972 and spent much of the 1970s appearing as a guest on top-rated television shows such as Gunsmoke, The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii Five-O, CHiPs, The F.B.I., Quincy, M.E., the UK's Thriller series, Police Woman, and Fantasy Island. She appeared in The Love Boat S1 E11 vignette "Silent Night" as Lila Barton, who stands by her wrongly imprisoned husband, played by John Gavin (1977).

Mills starred as a leading actress in a number of made-for-television movies through the 1970s. Her role in Play Misty for Me resulted in her being typecast as a damsel in distress for the next few years. She starred in Haunts of the Very Rich, Rolling Man and Night of Terror in 1972, was lead actress in The Bait (1973), Live Again, Die Again (1974), Beyond the Bermuda Triangle (1975), Curse of the Black Widow, The Hunted Lady and Woman on the Run in 1977, Bunco (1978), and co-starred in Who Is the Black Dahlia? (1975), Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976), Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976), Fire! (1977), Superdome (1978) and Hanging by a Thread (1979). In 1975, she starred as the eponymous character's suicidal girlfriend in the American International Pictures heist film Murph the Surf opposite Don Stroud and Robert Conrad, based on a real jewel burglary involving surfer Jack Roland Murphy. In 1979, Mills returned to the Midwest to star opposite Joe Namath in a stage production of Picnic by the Kenley Players of Ohio.