Hayley Mills invents Britpop

Here’s British actress Hayley Mills, photographed by John d Green on 5 December 1966 at his Kensington studios for Birds of Britain. She was twenty when the photograph was taken.

The union jack mini-dress predates Spice Girl Geri Halliwell’s by three decades. If that wasn’t British enough, Hayley drinks brown ale from a traditional dimpled pint glass. Don’t you love how the bottle sits primed like a space rocket on the ornate table alongside? Note how because this was not an advertising shoot, John d Green turned the label on the bottle down so as not to promote the brand.

The out-takes from the session show that brown ale probably wasn’t her favourite tipple. Two of the session photographs are included here – keep reading and you will see them down below. In the first, John passes Hayley a small glass of brown ale. In the second you can see her reaction.

Hayley Mills is the daughter of veteran British actor Sir John Mills. She began her acting career at the age of twelve opposite her father in the 1959 film Tiger Bay, for which she won a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer. During her early career she appeared in six films for Walt Disney and won a Golden Globe award for New Star Of The Year in 1961. Mills made her stage debut in a 1966 West End revival of Peter Pan; other notable film appearances included Whistle Down The Wind (1961), The Chalk Garden (1964) and The Family Way and in 1981 Mills returned to acting with a starring role in a UK television mini-series. In 1971 she married director Roy Boulting (of the Boulting Brothers) who was thirty years her senior. Their son Crispian is the lead singer and guitarist in raga rock band Kula Shaker.

This is one of the photographs in John d Green’s Birds of Britain collection, available to purchase as a signed limited edition in a range of sizes.