Donna Mills Wants To Relaunch Her Career At 81 Years Old

Donna Mills gained popularity playing the role of Abby in the primetime soap opera Knots Landing, a role for which she won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Outstanding Villainess three times, in 1986, 1988, and 1989 respectively. She stepped back from acting for over a decade until 2014, when she returned to television as a guest star in the ABC daytime soap General Hospital, for which she won the Outstanding Special Guest Performer in a Drama Series award at the 2015 edition of the Daytime Emmy Awards.

Mills was recently cast in Jordan Peele’s film Nope, released to theaters on July 22, 2022, with the hope that the small but significant role will reintroduce her to Hollywood. “I want to look forward, I’m not done yet, but I’ve had a fantastic career so far. I do not intend to retire, I want to work as long as I possibly can,” she said in an extensive interview with The Daily Beast.

Donna Mills’ Reason For Leaving Hollywood

In 1994, she adopted the newborn Chloe, which resulted in a shifting of priorities in her life, resulting in her abruptly giving up her acting career. “I left the business for 18 years to raise Chloe,” she explained. “When she was younger, I didn’t want to work, being out of town for two months at a time. Once she was in school, I didn’t want to take her out of school. I wanted to be a mom and loved every minute of it.”

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“When she went to college,” Mills added of her daughter, who’s now 27, “I was, like, ‘Okay, what do I do now?’ I love interior design and then thought, ‘Shoot, I’ll have to go to college to train for this.’ Then General Hospital called.”

Donna Mills Talk About Her Readiness To Take Hollywood By Storm

Despite her age (81), she’s in a great position to cope with the rigors of acting, having revealed her commitment to healthy living and staying active by working out four or five times a week, and playing tennis frequently. The Daytime Emmy Award winner worked on some projects prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and reconnected with her old manager, Larry Thompson, with whom she worked at the peak of her fame in the 1980s, to be better positioned for future roles.

“The year before the pandemic, I did five independent movies and two independent series, but the reason I re-hired Larry was because I wanted to bring an awareness of me back as an actor who was working again. I don’t want to stop. Not at all. I seriously love acting. I love creating a character and creating a role. Now I’m trying to get back to a ‘network’ level, whatever ‘network TV’ means these days. There are a lot of opportunities for women of my age. As Larry says, ‘We have to get you back into the conversation.’ That’s what we’re attempting to do now—so people think about me when they’re casting,” she said while showing her readiness to relaunch her Hollywood career. 

Donna Makes A Joke About Her Age

Donna’s sense of humor is still intact as she makes light of her age. “I go, ‘This can’t be right.’ Maybe they forged my birth certificate or something. I don’t feel old. it sucks thinking about mortality,” she said. “I want to stay here forever. I just do. But in your 70s and 80s, you go, ‘S***, how much longer do I have?’ That’s scary. So, I guess all you can do is live the fullest you can in what time you have left. I’m just grateful I have my health… I’m lucky.”