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Donna Mills (born Donna Jean Miller on December 11, 1940^[1] in Chicago, Illinois) is an American actress who began her career onstage in the late 1950s, but who first gained prominence as ex-nun Laura Donnelly on the soap opera Love is a Many Splendored Thing in the 1960s, before playing Michele Lee's conniving sister-in-law Abby Fairgate Cunningham Ewing Sumner on Knots Landing for almost a decade in the 1980s. She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Upon leaving Love she played opposite Clint Eastwood in Play Misty for Me, her most famous movie role to date. Her first television series role was as "Rocket" on the CBS soap opera The Secret Storm. She appeared in numerous TV movies through the 1970s but became best known for co-starring on the hit TV series Knots Landing from 1980 to 1989. Mills' friend (Larry Hagman) even reunited with her for 4 episodes, on which they stir up trouble. She and Hagman had once appeared together on a sitcom, The Good Life.

She returned for the series finale in 1993 and the reunion movie Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac in 1997. She has also appeared in The Six Million Dollar Man, The Love Boat, CHiPs, Quincy, M.E., Thriller, Fantasy Island, Melrose Place and Cold Case.

In November 2002, Camille Paglia asserted in an Interview magazine interview^[2] that the character of "Sandy" in Grease was based on Mills' experiences as a Chicago-area teen in the 1950s, even though no interview questions covered the subject and there is no corroboration of this. The authors of Grease grew up in Baltimore and attended Forest Park High School.

She has never married, but has an adopted child. It was rumored that she was once married to a now retired American Airlines Pilot whom she met and married in 1969 and they had a child together in 1974, then divorced in 1976. When she was approached on the subject, she simply smiled and replied "[A]ren't rumors fascinating?"^{[citation needed]}

• Play Misty For Me (1971)
• The Bait (1973)
• Live Again, Die Again (1974)
• Look What Happened To Rosemary's Baby (1976)
• Curse Of The Black Widow (1977)
• Bare Essence (1982)
• Alice in Wonderland (1985)
• The World's Oldest Living Bridesmaid (1989)
• Runaway Father (1990)
• The Lady Forgets(1989
• My name is Kate (1992)
• Her desperate choice (1993)
• In My Daughter's Name (1992)
• The Stepford Husbands (1996)
• An Element of Truth (1997)

1. ^ Born in 1940 according to IMDb Movies, [1] (retrieved 2007-01-11), although 1942 and 1943 may be found listed elsewhere.
2. ^ http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_10_32/ai_93211524

• Donna Mills at the Internet Movie Database