Former Disney actress Hayley Mills said she gave away “a rather big chunk” of her earnings to “the tax man.”
The original Parent Trap actress, now 80, appeared on an episode of The Rosebud Podcast alongside her sister, Juliet. Host Gyles Brandreth asked Mills about her fortune and “millions,” amassed over a career spanning decades that included a string of Disney films in the 1960s.
“I gave it to the tax man,” the British actress confessed.
“It was rather a big chunk,” she admitted. “It was most of it because it was all put into a trust fund, because [British] supertax was 90 percent in those days, so they had to do something.”
Mills comes from a family of prominent actors, the daughter of Sir John Mills, an Academy Award-winning actor, and Mary Hayley Bell, an actress and writer.
Known for Pollyanna and, later, for playing the dual role of twins in the original Parent Trap franchise, Mills was also honored as a Disney legend and is recognized for a long career in television and on stage.
Brandreth responded to Mills’ confession, saying that the actress was “poorly advised” at the time. “But also, it was partly to do with the naïveté of your father, I think. There was an innocence about him and a sort of optimism,” the TV presenter said.
“He had a business manager who made those sorts of decisions,” Juliet, Mills’s 84-year-old sister, replied. Mills concurred that their father was not advised well by their manager, Stanley.
“The trust company was set up for me. Stanley was also involved in setting up a trust company for Jack Hawkins. And the Inland Revenue attacked his trust company, which affected British law. It created the precedent,” Mills explained.
“And so, when I reached 21, instead of being given the key to the door, I was handed an envelope across a green baize tablecloth by Stanley, which was the Inland Revenue basically saying, ‘Thank you. You owe us 90 percent of your earnings,’” Mills continued. “And I’ve never been good at figures.”
“I said, ‘Well, what does this mean? I don’t understand.’ And Stanley laughed and said, ‘Well, I think it means you have to move to America.’ And that’s all he ever said. He was a crook,” she said.
Mills has been candid about her financial situation before, telling The Times of London in 2021 that receiving the money from the trust “would have been very nice.”
“I could have bought a bigger house or got a nicer car. But the main thing it would have given me is the freedom to say no and not to have to go America for work or whatever after that.”
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