Donna Mills

Donna Mills (born December 11, 1940) is an American actress and producer, most well known for her role as  Abby Cunningham on the prime time soap opera  Knots Landing.

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[show]==Life and careerEdit== === [edit] Early life and careerEdit=== Born as Donna Jean Miller in Chicago, Illinois, she attended Garvey Elementary School and Taft High school. After being double-promoted at Garvey, she graduated from Taft at an early age. From there, Mills attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1964 where she was a member of Delta Gamma sorority. She completed one year of course work and left to pursue an acting career. She gained some early stage experience in 1959.

Born

Donna Jean Miller

December 11, 1940 (age 73)

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

Residence

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Education

Taft High School

Alma mater

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Occupation

Actress

Years active

1965–present

Home town

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

Children

Chloe Mills (adopted)

Mills began her acting career on television with a guest role on The Steve Lawrence Show in 1965 as Hazel and then the CBS daytime soap opera The Secret Storm in 1966. Following this she gained a regular role as ex-nun Laura Donnelly on the soap Love is a Many Splendored Thing, which she played from 1967 to 1969. Mills appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's comedy, Don't Drink the Water, as the Sultan of Bashir's wife in 1969. === [edit] Television stardomEdit=== In 1971, Mills co-starred with Jessica Walter and Clint Eastwood  in the thriller Play Misty for Me, which has remained her most prominent movie role to date.

In 1971-2 she starred in the short-lived sitcom The Good Life with Larry Hagman who later guest-starred on Knots Landing as the iconic J. R. Ewing from their companion series Dallas. Prior to signing up a contract for Universal Studios in 1972 (much like her future Knots Landing co-stars Joan Van Ark and Kevin Dobson did at the same time), Mills spent much of the 1970s appearing as a guest on television shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, CHiPs, The Oregon Trail, Quincy, M.E., Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, Police Story, the UK's Thriller series playing a Canadian woman named Chrissie, an English model Helen Cook in the episode One Deadly Owner in 1974 and finally in 1975 in A Killer with Two Faces as an American estate agent Patty Heron alongside playing super heroic police officer Tracy Fleming in the 1971 TV film The Bait, Police Woman and Fantasy Island, as well as several made-for-TV movies and has become of US TV's Superstars.

 In 1980, Mills landed her most prominent role — that of the unmasked villain Abby Cunningham on the long-running primetime soap opera Knots Landing, a role she played until 1989. She had a villainous role before in the 1978 film Superdome. After leaving the series, Mills concentrated on television movies, several of which she co-produced like  In My Daughter's Name  (1992) and  My Name Is Kate  (1994).. Mills returned to  Knots Landing  for its final episode in 1993, and again for the reunion miniseries  Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac  in 1997. In between, she had a brief recurring guest role as  Josie Bissett 's mother on the popular 1990s primetime soap opera  Melrose Place.

Outside of acting, in 1986 Mills released "The Eyes Have It", an instructional video for achieving several different make-up looks. She went on to release her own line of cosmetics of the same name.

[edit] Later yearsEdit
In 2012, she guest-starred on ABC comedy series GCB as Bitsy Lourd, Annie Potts's character old rival.In 2005, she reunited with the Knots Landing cast for the reunion, Knots Landing: Together Again, in which the stars reminisced about the show. In more recent years, Mills has continued to make television movies as well as guest appearances in series such as Cold Case (season 4, episode 13 "Blackout") and Nip/Tuck (in which she guest-starred with fellow Knots Landing star Joan Van Ark).

Personal lifeEdit
Mills has never married. She has one adopted daughter, Chloe (born 1995). She currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

Mills appeared in pictorial for the October 1987 edition of Playboy Magazine. Mills appeared in a cover-featured (non-nude) pictorial for the November 1989 edition of Playboy Magazine. Her hobbies are tennis and field hockey when it was once believed that she numerous field hockey games in goal without a mask, faceguard or a helmet between 1971 and 1992. She now plays as goal defender in field hockey as believed without a protective mask