genre: nonfiction memoir
The movies of Hayley Mills are such a distinct and tangible part of my childhood. There is no way to count how many times I've seen the Parent Trap, Pollyanna, Summer Magic and Parent Trap II and so when I walked by this memoir on the shelf at the bookstore, I knew I wanted to learn about the life of this woman that I'd spent so much time with growing up.
The truth is that her story is a pretty wild one, not in the sense that tons of crazy things were always happening just that it was so incredibly unique. Her father was a very famous actor and so her life was full of famous people and if I have one gripe about the book, it's that there is so much name dropping that for maybe for British cinema lovers of generation maybe all the names are familiar but for me, maybe 50% of them I recognized. But it was such an interesting walk through time, beginning when she was little and started off in Pollyanna all that way through her early adulthood. She ends the book where, I believe, she felt like her childhood really ended so I did end up on Wikipedia when I was finished reading to try and piece together what I knew of some of her later years.
She's self-deprecatory and very vulnerable about her own mistakes and struggles, giving grace where she can. I loved learning about all the different films she made that I'd never heard of, I went online and found trailers on YouTube for five or six of them out of curiosity. The acting itself as well as the movie business is such a complex game and Hayley does a fine job of walking us through how the process shifted and changed for her as she got older. I wish there wasn't quite so much foreshadowing but it didn't stop me from enjoying Hayley's story. It's a compassionate look back at an unusual life.
No comments:
Post a Comment