Heather Mills

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Heather Mills bigraphy, stories - former glamour model, activist

Heather Mills : biography

1968-1-12 –

Heather Anne Mills (born 12 January 1968) is an English charity campaigner and former model.

Mills came to public attention in 1993, when a collision with a police motorcycle in London resulted in the amputation of her left leg below the knee. She continued to model using a prosthetic limb and sold her story to a tabloid newspaper, using the proceeds to establish the Heather Mills Health Trust, which recycles used prosthetic limbs to amputees unable to afford new ones and campaigns to remove and ban land mines.

She came to further public attention in 2000 when it became public that she was in a relationship with the former Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney., BBC News, 7 November 1999.

  • , BBC News, 13 April 2000. They married in June 2002 and Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003. The couple separated in 2006 and finalised their highly publicised divorce in 2008.

TV appearances

Mills was one of the celebrity performers showcased during the US television series Dancing with the Stars in 2007, with dancing partner Jonathan Roberts. On 21 December 2009, she was revealed as one of the contestants on the fifth series of Dancing on Ice, being paired with Matt Evers. She has stated that she would take part in the show in order to support the charities she frequently donates to, and also to show that disabled people can do more than people think. A subsequent campaign to get Mills removed from the show began online, but despite being the favourite to leave first, she was not voted off in the initial show. On 12 January 2010, her 42nd birthday, she was involved in a minor car accident following a rehearsal for the TV show Dancing on Ice, but was not hurt. Mills has also claimed that she turned down an offer of £350,000—the same figure given to participant Vinnie Jones—to appear on the final series of the UK’s Celebrity Big Brother.

Activism

In 2005, Mills became a patron of the British animal rights organisation Viva!, and the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation, which are both run by Juliet Gellatley. In 2006, Mills and Gellatley attended a debate on fur at the Oxford Union, where she presented a video depicting the skinning of a dog.’Viva! Life’ ‘Heather Mills McCartney and Paul McCartney, A Statement by Juliet Gellatley, founder and director of Viva! and the Vegetarians and Vegan Foundation’, issue 32, Summer 2006. She posed with her own dog in an anti-fur advertisement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which read: "If you wouldn’t wear your dog, please don’t wear fur".

In March 2006, Mills and McCartney travelled to Canada to bring attention to the country’s annual seal hunt. Sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States, they complained that the hunt was inhumane, and called on the Canadian government to put an end to it. Their arrival on the floes sparked much attention in Newfoundland and Labrador, where 90 per cent of the sealers live. Mills and McCartney protested against seals being clubbed to death, pierced with boat hooks and sometimes skinned alive. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Premier, Danny Williams, debated the issue with them on Larry King Live, the issue being that seals are no longer hunted that way, and have not been for a while. Mills joined a Viva! film team at a pig farm in Somerset, in February 2007, to publicise the use of restrictive farrowing crates, which are used for sows who are suckling piglets. A video of the investigation was made available on the Internet.

Mills’s relationship with PETA ended in 2007, when McCartney’s daughter, Mary, said she would not continue to take photographs for the organisation if Mills was involved with them. A PETA representative told the New York Post: "Heather’s exposé of the Chinese fur industry remains one of most popular videos on our site, but we don’t have any imminent campaigns planned with her".

Mills spoke in Hyde Park, London, on 19 November 2007, wearing a green t-shirt saying, "Vegan, you can’t get greener", arguing in favour of veganism on the grounds that livestock create more carbon emissions than transport (although she drove a Mercedes four-wheel drive car to the press conference, keeping the engine running for part of the morning). Mills said: "Eighty per cent of global warming comes from livestock and deforestation. I’m not telling people to go vegan overnight. But if they stop drinking their cows’ milk lattes, maybe this sort of thing won’t have to happen". She went on to say: "You have 25 other alternate milks in many health stores and supermarkets. It’s kind of bizarre. Why don’t we drink rat’s milk or dog’s milk or cat’s milk? You know, there are many, many other options". This led The Daily Telegraph, among others, to report the press conference under the headline, "Drink Rats’ Milk, says Heather Mills".