Thursday, 15 October 2009

all the king's women #11 - millie perkins


Millie Perkins hails from New Jersey and began modeling in New York City in the 1950s. by 1958 she was an international covergirl, and was pursued by director George Stevens to star in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), thus beginning her career as an actress.


Perkins received excellent reviews for her role in the film, and was signed to Universal Studios under a contract which gave Millie little choice in the films she would subsequently appear. on April 15, 1960, she married actor Dean Stockwell. there's a hilarious [i think] article from a 1959 magazine about the couple's courtship here. the two divorced in 1962, and Millie later married writer and director Robert Thom, who died in 1979.


in 1961, Millie played Betty Lee Parsons in Elvis' 7th film, Wild in the Country, also starring Tuesday Weld and Hope Lange. but Perkins was more interested in experimenting with her roles, having come of age in the midst of the beat generation, and this was not the sort of film she had dreamed of being a part of. soon after, Perkins broke her contract with Universal to pursue roles of her own choosing, working with Jack Nicholson in Ride the Whirlwind (1965), and The Shooting (1967).





Millie took a brief hiatus in the late 1960s to raise her children, but continues to act in both film and television, the most recent of her projects being the daytime TV drama the Young and the Restless.

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