John Mills

The Face of the Common Man

John Mills did not have the jaw of a Hollywood leading man or the stature of a 1940s action hero. He was a short man with ordinary features who ended up representing British dignity in wartime. He began by tap dancing on London stages long before the movies noticed his dramatic potential.

His first role came in 1932 with The Midshipmaid. But his career really took off when David Lean decided Mills was the perfect actor to embody English stoicism. In 1942, he shot In Which We Serve, and audiences saw in him someone they could trust.

In 1946, he starred in Great Expectations. That Dickens adaptation gave him the definitive push beyond British borders. Before making that film, he had briefly served in the army during World War II, but he was discharged due to a stomach ulcer.

And then came maturity.

From the Mud of Ireland to Late Recognition

Many actors of his generation retired when cinema changed in the 1970s. Mills did the opposite. In 1970, he accepted the role of Michael in Ryan's Daughter. He didn't say a single word in the entire film.

He played a man with an intellectual disability in a turbulent, grimy Ireland. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for that wordless performance. It was a resounding answer to those who thought he was only good for playing army officers with perfectly pressed uniforms.

The industry never forgot him.

But it wasn't all awards and constant applause. In the 1980s, his eyesight began to fail severely due to macular degeneration. That didn't stop him. He kept working in television and film, adapting the way he memorized his lines.

Blindness and the Final Act

Despite losing nearly all of his sight, Mills never stopped accepting scripts. In 1994, he took part in the television version of Martin Chuzzlewit. He had to learn his lines by ear because he could no longer read the pages of the original script.

His wife, Mary Hayley Bell, was his fundamental support through those decades of physical darkness. In 2001, the couple renewed their wedding vows after sixty years of marriage. By then, Mills was already a Knight of the British Empire (Sir) and a national institution in the United Kingdom.

His last on-screen appearance was a brief cameo in Lights2 in 2005. A few weeks after finishing that shoot, he died at his home in Buckinghamshire of a chest infection.

He was 97 years old and had worked on more than 120 productions over seven decades.