Fans love Donna Mills for her role on KNOTS LANDING, but did you know these seven facts about the star?
1. She became a first-time mom at 54. Actress Donna Mills adopted her daughter, Chloe, at 54 and put her career on hold to focus on raising her. She told CBS SUNDAY MORNING that motherhood became her greatest joy.
“Those are my happiest times in my life, sitting in the rocking chair with her on my chest, singing to her,” Mills recalled.
2. Acting wasn’t her original dream—ballet was. Long before KNOTS LANDING, Mills took ballet classes as a little girl in Chicago. In a 2017 Television Academy interview, she credited dance training with teaching her the discipline she later brought to acting.
“I started out as a dancer. That’s all I wanted to be,” Mills told the Television Academy.
3. Burt Reynolds helped her land a role with Clint Eastwood. Mills told CBS that actor Burt Reynolds recommended her to actor and director Clint Eastwood after working with her on DAN AUGUST. The recommendation led to her role in PLAY MISTY FOR ME — before she had even met Eastwood.
Related: Donna Mills Calls Adopting Daughter ‘My Greatest Joy’
“How did I do that? I never met him,” Mills recalled asking when her agent delivered the news.
4. She had to insist on auditioning for Abby. The KNOTS LANDING team already knew Mills’ work and initially said she didn’t need to read for the role. But she worried her good-girl image would keep them from considering her as the scheming Abby Cunningham, so she pushed for an audition.
“They won’t think I can do this role and I know I can,” Mills recalled telling her agent in her Television Academy interview.
5. She thought KNOTS LANDING was about a houseboat. Mills admitted she hadn’t watched the series before taking the job. Her idea of its premise included a boat and actor Andy Griffith — not the neighborhood drama that made Abby famous.
“I thought it was a show about a houseboat with Andy Griffith. I swear to you, I did!” Mills told CBS SUNDAY MORNING.
6. She picked out Abby’s clothes herself. Those KNOTS LANDING outfits didn’t simply arrive on a wardrobe rack. Mills told Vogue that she helped shape Abby’s look through weekly shopping trips, complete with a personal shopper, coffee and croissants.
“Once a week, the show would send me to Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and I’d pick out outfits for Abby,” Mills told Vogue.
7. Her backyard doubles as a vineyard — and she does the work. Mills and her partner, Larry Gilman, grow grapes at Mandeville Vineyards behind her Los Angeles home. She told Woman’s World that tending the vines gives her a welcome mental escape, and her chores include weeding, trimming and training the vines onto wires.
“There’s affixing the vines to the wire to make them grow up straight. I do that for hours and hours,” Mills explained.
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