Donna Mills's BIO Her role as ex-Sister Laura Donnelly on the soap opera Love is a Many Splendored Thing
December 11, 1942 (Chicago, Illinois, USA)
Donna Mills's Photos
Donna Mills's quotes |  |
|
“I was always cutting dialogue out when we were rehearsing, and when I produced movies, too. I felt that people don't say things in life-they act, they do things. I always wanted my characters doing, rather than saying what they were doing-which was redundant.”
“We need to follow our mission statement. We have to produce a productive student that can go out into society.”
“They sent me to catechism classes and then to first grade in a Catholic school, and apparently I cried and moaned and bitched so much that they took me out.”
“The shoulder pads were very powerful-and made the waist and hips look smaller, too.”
“Somebody like me doesn't get arthritis, doesn't get all the other diseases that come along. Well, it happened to me.”
“I thought it was very important that femininity wasn't lost.”
“I also loved musicals because I was a dancer.”
“If there is anything I would do differently in my life, it is that I would study business more. I'm trying to teach my daughter Chloe at an early age about investing and money so she's not afraid of it.”
“Abby was designed to be the troublemaker and stir things up. She wasn't evil, she was naughty.”
“A lot of actors just do whatever they do, and wherever the camera is, it is. They don't pay much attention, but I always did. I was always very close to the camera crew. They were my best buddies, no matter what movie or show I was doing.”
“I found through my fan mail that women... really wanted a role model.”
“The meeting tonight was to reinstate or not reinstate the bus stops.”
“I just think we are sending a mixed message. We shouldn't even be using the words 'school closure' right now.”
“I was tired of playing the goodie-two-shoes.”
“You know, when they called me about the role, I thought Knots Landing was a show about a houseboat with Andy Griffith!”
“I feel more comfortable in front of a camera than anywhere else.”
“I've tried to develop scripts that have entertainment value, but that also have something to say.”
“The lighting is so important. One thing that makes me nuts about the lighting now is that they spend an enormous amount of time lighting the set, the background. But the most important thing in the scene is the actor.”
“One of my favorite movies is The Little Foxes.”
“I would spend at least one day a week-whatever day I had off-shopping for the next show. A lot of times, I'd have seven or eight outfits in one show. There might be a gown or cocktail dress, but... I felt the clothes had to be special.”
“There were episodes where I would wear seven or eight outfits. It took a lot of time to get those together. What the character wears is very essential to how I create the character.”
“Once I left Knots Landing, I didn't shop for years. I was so tired of shopping!”
“My message is-Keep moving. If you do, you'll keep arthritis at bay.”
“You really have to love the work. You can't look for stardom. That's a by-product.”
“Rita Hayworth in Gilda... there's not a shot of her in that movie that isn't gorgeous.”
“I was brought up Catholic, and my family is still very religious.”
“Early on in my career, I'd go into the makeup trailer, and they'd spend an hour doing my makeup, and I would hate it. I'd go into the bathroom, wash it off and start over again, which took an enormous amount of time. So I just started doing it myself.”
“I was very uncomfortable in the habit-all that starched white stuff. I smoked at the time and used to love to walk down the halls of CBS with a cigarette dangling out of my mouth. People were just aghast.”
“The sound department was constantly yelling at me. I don't have a very loud voice to begin with. A lot of times, they'd put a lavaliere mike on me and crank it up.”
“When I first started out, I did some modeling, and I used to feel tremendously inferior because I'm 5'4", and I was always around these 6-foot women. I felt like a shrimp. And I hated that.”
“I always wanted to know what lens they were on, how close they were. I didn't do it with a plan in mind, but I would instinctively gear what I was doing toward what lenses they were using.”
“I always wanted to go against hat grain because it was too restricting.”
“I have been asking for years for documentation from staff on why the current configuration is a good thing academically, ... There is nothing to prove that it is.”
“That's certainly what I grew up with-ballet and musical comedy. My mother taught ballroom dancing and, I think, would have liked to have been a dancer herself. So she pushed me a lot when I was very young, but I loved it. All I really wanted to be was a dancer. There's a discipline in dance that you don't get anywhere else.”
“My father was a middle manager at an oil company, but I never knew anything about his work. Whatever business acumen I have just got gleaned over the years.”
“Abby would do things that weren't very ethical, but she was never evil. She had a humanity that characters like her on the other soaps didn't have.”
“Even colors were important to me. If it was a somber scene, the colors were muted and dark. If it was a happy or seductive scene, the colors were brighter.”
“I always wore the highest heels possible, because the other women on the show were tall.”
“I did a video... and now I have an eye-makeup kit out. I did the video because I got so many letters. I did my own makeup.”
“I kept bugging them about making it more upscale, because I felt Abby, through her cleverness and business sense, was a character who would move up. And that's what she did.”
“Dallas and Dynasty would be finished at 4:30 in the afternoon. On Knots, we never shot less than a 12-hour day. Everybody tried to make it special. And I think it showed.”
“I really want to spend as much time as I can with my daughter and really participate in her growing up. I'm very active in her school.”
“I'm back to doing everything I used to, loving life as ever.”
“I always loved Bette Davis-she's probably my very favorite. She had an influence on me in that I felt I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking the things she wanted me to know about. When you're in extreme close-up, all you have to do is think, and the thoughts will read.”
|
