THIS ACTRESS WAS ‘A BIT OF A TOMBOY’ WHO DREAMED OF BECOMING A DANCER — SHE IS ALSO AN INDEPENDENT SINGLE MOM
This ballerina’s dance teacher alerted her to a change in focus.
She realized her life would not be “complete” until she made a particular move.
The single mom’s home with her longtime partner has a few offbeat attractions and finishes.
The pig-tailed youngster in this photo dreamed of becoming a professional dancer, specifically, a ballerina. She imagined the curtain opening and somebody handing her a bouquet as she took a bow after a performance.
Raised in the suburbs of Norwood Park, Chicago, this girl began taking dance classes at five and was an accomplished speed skater, for which she won medals.
“I remember my childhood as being normal—playing in the yard, playing outside, climbing trees. I was a bit of a tomboy,” she said. Her brother, who was eleven years older, had other pursuits.
The little dancer was also very observant, noticing how her housewife mother, Bernice, “came alive” during her occasional employment as a telephone operator. She saw how the work gave her mom “a sense of independence.”
Union Oil employed her father, Ambrose, who asked his wife to stop working, believing he made enough to support the family. This “saddened” her mother who didn’t want to give up her job. The girl recalls:
“That impacted me greatly because I could see such a difference in her, but I never spoke to her about it.”
This girl learned from her parents without internalizing their values. Something else she shunned was their bigotry. During her one year in college, which she attended only to please her parents, her mother disowned her for dating a Jewish boy.
Landing a part in a touring company of “My Fair Lady” put her on the rocky path of stardom at 19. Her first acting credit was in Neil Simon’s debut play, “Come Blow Your Horn.” She remembers:
“My then-dance teacher said to me, ‘You’ve got the acting bug. You’re not going to be a ballet dancer.’ I said, ‘Oh no, I’ll be a ballet dancer,’ but they were right.”
Relocating to New York City, she was in a few commercials and auditioned for dance and theatre shows. She learned much about the business when cast in the daytime soaps “The Secret Storm” and “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.”
Along with a co-star on the last mentioned soap, she negotiated a deal that allowed her to do guest starring roles on primetime shows. She went on to play one of the first lesbian characters on TV on “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors” in 1972.
The Midwesterner became friends with Burt Reynolds when she had a guest spot opposite him on “Dan August.” He recommended her to his friend, Clint Eastwood, who was casting his feature “Play Misty for Me.”
Her performance in the thriller was well received, but it got her typecast as a damsel-in-distress. At around 40, she found the part that would make her an international superstar, a role that would define her career dramatically.
This is how the aspiring dancer from the Chicago suburbs, Donna Mills, became the conniving Abby Cunningham on “Knots Landing,” one of the most famous TV villains in the ’80s and early ’90s.
