Donna Mills

Donna Mills (born December 11, 1940) is an American actress and producer, most well known for her role as  Abby Cunningham on the prime time soap opera  Knots Landing.

[edit] Early life and career
Donna Mills 1975Born as Donna Jean Miller in Chicago, Illinois, she attended Garvey Elementary School and Taft High school. After being double-promoted at Garvey, she graduated from Taft at an early age. From there, Mills attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was a member of Delta Gamma sorority. She completed one year of course work and left to pursue an acting career. She gained some early stage experience in the late 1950s.

Mills began her acting career on television with a guest role on the CBS daytime soap opera The Secret Storm in 1966. Following this she gained a regular role as ex-nun Laura Donnelly on the soap Love is a Many Splendored Thing, which she played from 1967 to 1970. Mills appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's comedy, Don't Drink the Water, as the Sultan of Bashir's wife.

[edit] Television stardom
In 1971, Mills co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the thriller Play Misty For Me, which has remained her most prominent movie role to date.

In 1971-2 she starred in the short-lived sitcom The Good Life with Larry Hagman who later guest-starred on Knots Landing as the iconic J. R. Ewing from their companion series Dallas. Prior to signing up a contract for Universal Studios in 1972 (much like her future Knots Landing co-stars Joan Van Ark and Kevin Dobson did at the same time), Mills spent much of the 1970s appearing as a guest on television shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, CHiPs, The Oregon Trail, Quincy, M.E., the UK's Thriller series, Police Woman and Fantasy Island, as well as several made-for-TV movies.

 In 1980, Mills landed her most prominent role — that of scheming, manipulative nasty vixen Abby Cunningham on the long-running primetime soap opera Knots Landing, a role she played until 1989. After leaving the series, Mills concentrated on tetelevision movies, several of which she co-produced like  In My Daughter's Name  (1992) and  My Name Is Kate  (1994).. [2]  Mills returned to  Knots Landing  for its final episode in 1993, and again for the reunion miniseries  Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac  in 1997. In between, she had a brief recurring guest role as  Josie Bissett 's mother on the popular 1990s primetime soap opera  Melrose Place.

Outside of acting, in 1986 Mills released "The Eyes Have It", an instructional video for achieving several different make-up looks. She went on to release her own line of cosmetics of the same name.

[edit] Later years
In 2012, she guest-starred on ABC comedy series GCB as Bitsy Lourd, Annie Potts's character old rival.In 2005, she reunited with the Knots Landing cast for the reunion, Knots Landing: Together Again, in which the stars reminisced about the show. In more recent years, Mills has continued to make television movies as well as guest appearances in series such as Cold Case (season 4, episode 13 "Blackout") and Nip/Tuck (in which she guest-starred with fellow Knots Landing star Joan Van Ark).

Personal life
Mills has never married. She has one adopted daughter, Chloe (born 1995). She currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

Mills appeared in pictorial for the October 1987 edition of Playboy Magazine. Mills appeared in a cover-featured (non-nude) pictorial for the November 1989 edition of Playboy Magazine.