In Remembrance: Sir John Mills

     Sir John Mills, the British character actor who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a mute villager in David Lean’s 1970 romantic drama Ryan’s Song, has passed away in Denham, England on Saturday, April 23, 2005. He was 97.

     Born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills on February 22, 1908 in North Elmham, Norfolk, England, Mills grew up in Suffolk, where his father was headmaster of a village school in Great Yarmouth. He would later state that acting was the only profession he was ever interested in. While a teenager, Mills worked as a clerk in a corn merchant’s office while acting with local amateur theater companies. He moved to London with the encouragement of his sister Annette, a professional dancer, to pursue stage work.

     Mills made his stage debut in 1929 as a chorus boy at the London Hippodrome in The Five O’Clock Girl. Later that year, he would join the “The Quaints,” an acting troupe that toured India and the Far East with a repertoire that ranged from Shakespeare to modern plays and musical comedies. While on tour, he was seen by playwright Noel Coward, who would help in his being get cast in several of Coward’s shows in London, including Cavalcade and the 1932 revue Words And Music.

     Mills made an inauspicious film debut playing a sailor in the 1932 comedy The Midshipmaid. He appeared in small roles in several films, working his way up to his first prominent role, that of war bound student Peter Colley, in 1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips. It was the first of many roles for Mills during wartime in which he played an average British young man bravely going off to war, including In Which We Serve (1942, written by Coward), This Happy Breed (1944) Way To The Stars and Waterloo Road (both 1945). Even after the war ended, Mills continued to appear in notable British war films including The Colditz Story, Above Us The Waves (both 1955), Ice-Cold In Alex and Dunkirk (both 1958). In the 1960 film Tunes Of Glory, Mills gave one of his best performances playing a compulsive disciplinarian British officer on the verge of a nervous breakdown, opposite Sir Alec Guinness.

     Mills also appeared in numerous classic British films including appearing as the adult Pip in Lean’s 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations and the 1966 comedy The Wrong Box, set in Victorian England. Other films include Scott Of The Antarctic (1948), the comedy The Baby And The Battleship (1956), Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and King Rat (1965). He appeared as the Viceroy of India in Gandhi (1982). He would appear in five films with his daughter, actress Hayley Mills including her debut Tiger Bay (1959).

     Although he considered himself just a working actor, Mills won the London Daily Mail’s National Film Award reader’s poll as the nation’s most popular actor.

     In 1960 he was named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II and was knighted in 1976.

     His last feature film role was a small cameo in Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things (2003).