The actress has zero regrets about taking a break from her life in show business.
Donna Mills has had a long and illustrious career in Hollywood but there was once a time when she decided to take an abrupt 18-year-long gap from the industry and she did it with zero regrets. Mills is famously known for starring in Clint Eastwood's 1971 directorial debut Play Misty for Me as well as her performance in the primetime soap opera, Knots Landing, in 1980.
She took a step back from her acting career in her 50s and adopted her daughter, Chloe, who is now 27. "I was very concentrated on my career, but at a certain point, I realized there was something missing and it was a child," Mills told PEOPLE. "So I went after it. I adopted her when she was four days old."
"By that time, I was 54 and people said, 'You're going to be so old to have a little toddler running around. I never felt older than the other mothers who were probably in their 20s," the 82-year-old continued. Despite having a successful career, she yearned to be a mother and when she adopted her daughter, she was more than willing to stay at home with her.
"I took off 18 years," she explained. "Well, for the first couple of years, I did work. I did some movies for television and stuff like that because I could take her wherever I went. But then when she started school, I wasn't going to go out of town for two months at a time. And I didn't become a mother to give her to a nanny."
Although people around her raised eyebrows when she adopted a child in her 50s, she didn't let it bother her and has since formed a close bond with Chloe. "If you want to give to your career, I say having a child later in life is better than having a child early," Mills said.
Speaking to Fox News in 2017, Mills revealed that when she played Abby in Knots Landing, "she met a lot of people who were kind of standoffish to her."
"I thought, 'What did I do?' I'm friendly, I'm usually pretty nice. I didn't know why they were so cold. And I learned, they thought I was like Abby. So they were worried I was going to somehow do something bad to them. Steal their husbands, I don't know. And so, I really had to fight hard to overcome that in real life," the star shared.
When questioned about a possible Knots Landing reboot, Mills admitted that she would be happy to take on Abby again if asked. "Absolutely. That was a once-in-a-lifetime character. I would absolutely do it in a heartbeat. If it were up to me, I would say yes to a reboot. I think it would be fascinating to see where those characters are today and what they've experienced over the years. I think it would be fun to find out," she said.
Mills was last seen in the 2022 Jordan Peele film, Nope.
References:
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/knots-landing-donna-mills-hollywood-break-18-years
Cover Image Source: Getty Images/Rich Fury
