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Heather Mills
Born (1968-01-12) 12 January 1968 (age 56)
Aldershot, Hampshire, England
Spouse(s)Alfie Karmal (1989-1991)
Paul McCartney (2002-present)
ChildrenBeatrice Milly McCartney

Heather Ann, Lady McCartney (née Mills; born 12 January 1968) is an English campaigner and former glamour model. She campaigns on behalf of several causes, including amputees, the curtailment of land mines and animal rights.

She is best known for being the estranged wife of former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, and though she is legally Lady McCartney, she does not use the title. Since she and her husband have separated, she has stated her preference to be known as Heather Mills but is often known as Heather Mills McCartney or the more unflattering Mucca, to McCartney's "Macca", in the press.

The McCartneys announced their separation in May 2006, just prior to McCartney's 64th birthday. Divorce proceedings are under way.

Early career

She is a daughter of John Mark Francis Mills, a British former soldier, and his wife, the former Beatrice Mary Finlay. A few months after Heather Ann Mills was born, her family moved to Washington, then in County Durham. Her mother left home when she was nine, leaving Mills and her siblings in the care of her father. When he went to prison, she moved to London to live with her mother. As a teenager she ran away from home and found herself homeless.

Having tried several jobs, she began a career in modeling and in 1988, while aged twenty, she took part in a photoshoot with a male model with whom she performed simulated sexual acts. The photos were published in a book entitled Die Freuden der Liebe (The Joys of Love). An American edition was published in the same year with the title Sex Games. The male model has stated the book project was presented to him as a sex manual, not pornography.

In early 1989, after becoming more established as a model, she and her mother reconciled. Her mother had minor surgery and subsequently died; a blood clot moved into her lungs and heart resulting in death. Mills married Alfie Karmal, a dishwasher salesman she had been dating off and on for three years, on 6 May 1989; by this marriage, she had two stepsons. She and Karmal divorced in 1991.

In 1990, she moved to what was then Slovenia, then still part of Yugoslavia, to recover from an ectopic pregnancy. She arrived to witness the unfolding war first-hand. Over the following two years, she modeled to raise funds for refugees of the war, commuting between Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and the UK and working with government agencies to establish refugee crisis centers, hospitals and housing for the homeless.

Accident and leg amputation

In August 1993, she was hit by a police motorcycle while crossing the road near London's Kensington Palace; her injuries included crushed ribs and a punctured lung. She needed a metal plate put into her pelvis and also the amputation of her left leg below the knee. Mills has a prosthetic leg, notably taking it off and showing it to USA talk show host Larry King during his interview with her in October 2002 on Larry King Live. While in hospital, she let reporters into her hospital room and sold her story.

Following the accident she arranged for prostheses to be sent from the United Kingdom to the war-torn former Yugoslavia.

Marriage to Paul McCartney

While she was engaged to be married to Chris Terrill, a film maker, she met Paul McCartney and abandoned her fiancé only days before the wedding. After a period of going out with each other, in March 2000 Mills and McCartney announced they were in love. He eventually proposed with a diamond and sapphire ring he had purchased in India.

Heather Mills married McCartney on 11 June 2002, four years after his first wife Linda McCartney died of breast cancer. Their wedding was an elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie (once home of Shane Leslie) in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan, Ireland.

As a result of this marriage, Mills became stepmother to Sir Paul's children from his marriage to Linda: ceramics designer Heather McCartney, photographer Mary McCartney, fashion designer Stella McCartney, and musician and sculptor James McCartney.

On 28 October 2003, Mills gave birth to the couple's only child together, a daughter, Beatrice Milly McCartney. The baby was named after Heather's late mother Beatrice and Sir Paul's Aunt Milly.

In October 2005 Mills won damages from The People newspaper for falsely claiming she had suffered a miscarriage which had left her and Paul grief-stricken and struggling to cope with their loss.

Divorce

On 17 May 2006 it was announced via the couple's websites that she was to separate from her husband. When it became known that McCartney had left her and was seen and photographed in France, Heather Mills claimed that they were still together. Only a few days later the couple announced their separation in a joint statement. Media speculation in the weeks prior to this had been intense. In the London newspaper the Evening Standard on 18 May 2006, Mills told of the hurt she felt over claims she had only married McCartney for his money, and she said "I am no gold digger" and that the allegations were "worse than losing my leg." However, in October 2007 she was voted first on a list of Gold Diggers in an online poll. The Daily Telegraph was one of a number of British newspapers to suggest that if the couple did eventually divorce, it could lead to the UK's biggest ever divorce settlement, some estimating she could receive £200 million (a quarter of McCartney's wealth). On 30 July 2006, McCartney filed for divorce from Heather Mills citing "unreasonable behaviour." In October 2006 national newspaper The Daily Mail alleged that McCartney accused Ben Amigoni, Mills' personal trainer, of having an affair with her; she later denied that Amigoni was her lover.

Under English law, a divorce or dissolution of marriage can be made in as little as six weeks. However, Mills has vowed to fight the case in both Britain and the United States. She is using the services of divorce lawyer Anthony Julius, from London solicitors Mishcon de Reya who had acted in the 1996 divorce for Diana, Princess of Wales, while her estranged husband is said to have instructed the divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton, who acted for Prince Charles.

On 24 October 2006, Mills announced her intention, through solicitors, to sue the Daily Mail and London's Evening Standard over "false, damaging and immensely upsetting" claims surrounding her divorce from McCartney. It has not been stated whether the litigation will be on the grounds of libel or invasion of privacy. Her law firm also intend an action against The Sun.

The Sun, which regularly refers to her as "Mucca" (a play on Paul's nickname "Macca"), has responded to Mills' threat to sue by asking her to "tick the boxes" on a series of allegations the paper has made about the former model stating "It is not clear what exactly she plans to sue us about." The paper then asks: "Come on Heather, what exactly did we get wrong? Is it that you're a ..." Underneath the open question, the Sun lists six allegations about the former model, with a blank box beside each one. The words beside the boxes read: "Hooker, Liar, Porn Star, Fantasist, Trouble Maker, Shoplifter".

In December 2006 Mills told the BBC that she has received "death threats" since splitting with her husband; on 17th December 2006 the BBC's website reported that Police have warned Heather Mills over a "non-specific threat" made to her safety.

On 21 January 2007, the press announced a settlement between the two, mentioning that McCartney would pay £32 million in cash and property to his ex-wife. The deal appears to incorporate a gagging order. Marilyn Stowe, a leading UK divorce lawyer writing in The Times called it "one of the most high-profile marriage breakdowns in history".

Since January 2007 Heather Mills and her sister Fiona have a new section attached to Heather's website called "Enough is enough", similar to their "facts and fictions" section. So far they posted two excerpts in this sections, which were both removed from the website after a short time. In the first excerpt the sisters accused McCartney of not caring to pay for Heather's security even though she claims to receive death threats. However, the letter of support McCartney wrote for Heather Mills about two years ago is also still on her website. In the second excerpt, the sisters complained about false and misleading media reports which included a definition of "character assassination" taken from Misplaced Pages.

In March 2007, Mills told BBC News 24 television, "I will never get over it. I will always love Paul. He is the father of my child but I just have to move on and deal with it and there is nothing I can do... I have never spoken badly about my husband. I never will -- he is the father of my child." She also insisted that the media's attitude to her was biased. "It's a big powerful group of people behind this whole campaign against me," she said, "all I want is balanced coverage, not just the one sided, 'let's crucify and vilify Heather.'"

Dancing with the Stars

Mills was one of the celebrity performers showcased during the U.S. television series Dancing with the Stars in 2007. The show's fourth season began March 19 of that year. She was eliminated from the show in the sixth week of competition on April 24,2007. Mills gave her entire payment for appearing on the show to Viva!.

Activism and awards

Mills is an activist for several causes, particularly against the use of landmines, vegetarianism, and animal rights.

In 2003 the Open University of the United Kingdom awarded her an honorary degree for this. Websites under control by Heather Mills describe this misleadingly as an "Open University Doctorate".

In 2004 she received a "Children in Need" award from the annual International Charity Gala in Düsseldorf. The proceeds from this gala went to UNESCO.

The University of California, Irvine, honoured Mills with the 2004 Human Security Award and created the Heather Mills McCartney Fellowship in Human Security, to support graduate students conducting research on pressing human security issues.

United Nations Association of the USA

Mills is currently a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA), a private charitable trust, which is not directly connected to the United Nations Organization but works to highlight the goals of the UN.

Sir Paul and Lady McCartney are both patrons of Adopt-A-Minefield, a programme by the UNA-USA. Proceeds from Mills' updated autobiography, A Single Step, will be donated to the cause.

Amputees

In addition to promoting distribution of prostheses worldwide, she has been involved with the development of the "Heather Mills McCartney Cosmesis" 'to give amputees in America a chance to wear a Dorset Orthopaedic cosmesis without the need to visit us here in the UK'.

Seal hunting

In March 2006, Mills and McCartney ventured to eastern Canada to bring attention to the country's annual seal hunt. Sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States, they claimed the hunt was inhumane and called on the Canadian government to put it to an end. Their arrival on the floes sparked much attention in Newfoundland and Labrador where 90% of the sealers live. Due to the intense media attention, they had a debate and were shown up by Newfoundland and Labrador's Premier Danny Williams on Larry King Live.

Fur trade

Heather Mills also campaigns against the trade in dog fur (which is often passed off as fur from other animals), and particularly the live skinning of dogs.

She posed with her dog, in an anti-fur advertisement for a PETA campaign, which had the catchline: "If you wouldn't wear your dog, please don't wear fur" campaign.

In 2006 she attended, along with Juliet Gellatley, a debate on fur at the Oxford Union. When Mills was speaking she gave a prearranged signal to her sister Fiona who stood up, faced the audience and turned on the body TV which had been hidden under her coat. It showed a dog being skinned alive and its piercing screams of agony shrieked out into the hall. Heather was flooding with tears.

A video has come to light of Mills wearing a mink coat she owned and wrote about in her autobiography. However, this alleged video footage was taken in 1989, years before being involved in animal rights or vegetarianism. Mills has stated that "It's only since I met Paul that I really got to understand how vegetarianism not only benefits your health massively but also makes a huge difference to the planet, to animals and to feeding the world."

Pig farms

Heather Mills joined a team from Viva! to film at a pig farm in Somerset in February 2007. This was to publicize the use of restrictive farrowing crates, used for sows who are suckling piglets. A video of the investigation is available on the internet.

Viva!

Mill's has been actively involved with the Britain's leading vegetarian, vegan and animal rights organisation, Juliet Gellatley's Viva!. She is also involved with Gellatley's Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation. Mills became a patron to both organisations in 2005.

PETA

Mills became involved with Animal Rights group PETA through McCartney, who had been involved with them for years prior. Since the couple's divorce, it is alleged that she has been dropped by PETA over her controversial behavior and because McCartney's daughter Mary refused to continue her work with the organization unless it cut ties with Heather Mills. However, this is unsubstantiated by any major news network. What is said by the major news networks is that it is "because the zealot organization doesn't want to offend her ex, longtime PETA supporter Paul McCartney." and, a PETA representative had told the New York Post that "Heather's exposé of the Chinese fur industry remains one of most popular videos on our site...although we don't have any imminent campaigns planned with her."

Criticisms

Heather Mills has been written about in several publications for alleged embellishments to her life story. For example, the journalist Heather Mills of Private Eye magazine has accused Mills of impersonating her for over a year in the late 90s.

Articles have also questioned the effectiveness of her charitable work in the Balkans, and she has also come under criticism from disabled people claiming she presumes to speak on their behalf.

On occasion McCartney has defended Mills against criticism, via her website or his own.

Tabloid newspaper the News of the World alleged that she was involved in prostitution during an earlier period of her life. Mills has strongly denied the allegations. The Reuters news agency quoted Mills McCartney's lawyers on Tuesday 13 June who issued a statement saying. "Heather is very distressed by this article... she has suffered weight loss, anxiety and sleeping problems as a result of the stress and anxiety of the break-up of her marriage." The statement was made by Stephen Taylor from Buckinghamshire-based solicitors Coyle White Devine. Her lawyers also issued a warning that "She will defer issue of legal proceedings until the arrangements in relation to the divorce are concluded but intends to sue at that stage all parties (including individuals) who are intent on damaging her reputation".

In March 2007, British police warned Heather Mills about using the emergency phone number '999' too often. They are quoted as saying they are having to spend a disproportionate amount of time on one particular person. Kevin Moore, the Chief Superintendent of Sussex Police, said that Mills runs "the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf." Mills says that "I didn't waste police time - they encouraged me to use them when I was being harassed." The BBC report that "A spokesman for Lady McCartney said she was nervous after getting death threats and being followed at night." Moore said that "We do have to respond to a disproportionate high volume of calls from Heather Mills McCartney because of the situations she finds herself in, and this is regrettable as it takes officers away from other policing matters." Mills has officially responded to the police calls criticisms.

These criticisms have been reviewed and answered by Mills' sister Fiona.

Juliet Gellatley has also vehemently defended Mills in her magazine Viva! Life.

Academic and producer Robert Dassanowsky has also praised Mills' kindness and her support in his late mother's (Elfi von Dassanowsky) attempted amputation rehabilitation. .

During several interviews broadcast on UK television in October 2007, Mills accused the media of giving her "worse press than a paedophile or a murderer". She also likened her situation, due to the similar unwanted press coverage, to those of the late Princess Diana – who, according to Mills, was "chased and killed" by paparazzi – and Kate McCann. She called for a boycott of The Sun, citing |youcare.com. Immediately before giving these interviews, her PR adviser, Phil Hall, quit. She then went to America where she gave a number of further televised interviews, saying that the divorce was largely brought about by her husband who disliked her insistence that he should give more of his fortune to charities and who had reneged on a promise to shoulder the responsibility in return for her seeking no settlement for herself.

Bibliography

  • A Single Step (ISBN 0-446-53165-0)
  • Life Balance - the Essential Keys to a Lifetime of Well Being (ISBN 0718146670)

References

  1. "Daily Mail".
  2. "The Sun".
  3. http://www.heathermills.org/factfiction.php
  4. http://www.heathermills.org/factfiction.php
  5. "The Times".
  6. "BBC News".
  7. "H M McCartney".
  8. "BBC News".
  9. "sify". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |}date= ignored (help)
  10. DailyMail.co.uk
  11. ^ Mills' fear over 'death threats' BBC News 1 December 2006
  12. "Exposay".
  13. "BBC News".
  14. "Lady McCartney to sue newspapers - BBC News".
  15. Guardian.co.uk
  16. BBC News
  17. "Sawfnews".
  18. "Marilyn Stowe:My advice to Sir Paul? Pay up now - and get a gagging order - The Times, London. 18 October, 2006".
  19. "Daily Mail".
  20. "H M McCartney".
  21. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17257926/
  22. VVF's VeggieHealth magazine, Issue 13, Spring 2007.
  23. "Heather Mills".
  24. "The Nexus".
  25. "Fur is dead".
  26. 'Viva! Life' 'Heather Mills McCartney and Paul McCartney, A Statement by Julliet Gellatley, founder and director of Viva! and the Vegetarians and Vegan Foundation', issue 32, Summer 2006.
  27. "Female first".
  28. Viva!Life, Issue 29, Summer 2005.
  29. "Heather Mills in pig farm raid to highlight 'cruelty'".
  30. "Viva".
  31. "Viva".
  32. "New York Post".
  33. "Daily Telegraph".
  34. "New York Post".
  35. "Daily Telegraph".
  36. "The Times".
  37. http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk
  38. "BBC News".
  39. "BBC News".
  40. "BBC News".
  41. "H M McCartney".
  42. http://www.heathermills.org/response.php Fact and Fiction
  43. 'Viva! Life' 'Heather Mills McCartney and Paul McCartney, A Statement by Julliet Gellatley, founder and director of Viva! and the Vegetarians and Vegan Foundation', issue 32, Summer 2006.
  44. APA News Release October 1, 2007 "APA". {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  45. GMTV, This Morning and BBC News 24
  46. Heather Mills: I'll die like Princess Diana (The Sun Online)

External links

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