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Heather Ann Mills McCartney (born 12 January 1968) is the estranged wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney as well as an activist and former glamour model. She campaigns on behalf of several causes, including aid for amputees, the curtailment of land mines and animal rights.

Early life and career

Early life and family

Mills was born in Aldershot, Hampshire to John "Mark" Mills, a former British paratrooper, and his wife, Beatrice Mary Finlay, the India-born daughter of a colonel in the British Army. A few months after her birth, the family moved to the town of Washington in Tyne and Wear, then to Cockshott Farm in Rothbury.

When she was eight years old, she was sexually assaulted by a swimming pool attendant, something that her family say affected her deeply, as did her father's reportedly violent relationship with her mother. Her mother left home when Mills was nine, leaving Mills, her older brother Shane, and her younger sister, Fiona, in the care of their father.

When her father was jailed after being convicted of fraud, Mills moved to London to live with her mother and her mother's new partner, actor Charles Stapley, but at the age of 15, she ran away from home to join a funfair, and found herself living in a cardboard box under Waterloo Station for four months. Just before or after this period, she was put on probation for having stolen from a jeweller's shop, where she worked after leaving school. Mills and her mother reconciled in 1989, shortly before her mother died during minor surgery.

Modelling career and first marriage

Having tried several jobs, she set up her own model agency in 1986. It was during this period of her life that she took part in a photoshoot for a German sex education manual called Die Freuden der Liebe (The Joys of Love), during which she simulated sex acts with a male model. She also modelled for full-frontal nude photographs.

In May 1989, she married Alfie Karmal, a dishwasher salesman with two sons from a previous marriage. The couple divorced in 1991.

Work in Croatia and car accident

In 1992, Mills took a job as a ski instructor in Yugoslavia, just as the civil war there broke out. The BBC reports that she set up a refugee crisis centre in London and succeeded in helping 20 people to escape. She also delivered donations to Croatia, driving thousands of miles there on her own, sometimes via Austria where she took modelling assignments to pay for the trip.

In August 1993, she was hit while crossing the road near London's Kensington Palace by a police motorcycle travelling to an emergency, suffering crushed ribs, a punctured lung, and the loss of her left leg below the knee. A metal plate later had to be inserted into her pelvis. She was awarded $200,000 damages by the police. She has since become known for showing people her prosthetic leg, famously taking it off during an interview in 2002 with American talk show host Larry King.

After the accident, she sold her story to the News of the World, and set up the Heather Mills Health Trust to deliver prosthetic limbs to people, particularly children, who have undergone amputation after standing on landmines. In 1994, a year after her accident, she travelled to Croatia to film interviews with some of the people who were helped by her campaign, showing her own injury to other victims to persuade them that recovery is possible.

In 1999, she became engaged to documentary cameraman Chris Terrill, but ended the relationship two weeks before the wedding.

Second marriage

Mills met Paul McCartney at the Pride of Britain charity event in April 1999, where she was presenting an award for courage and made an appeal on behalf of the Heather Mills Trust. In July 2001, McCartney proposed with a diamond and sapphire ring he had purchased in India. They were married on 11 June 2002, four years after McCartney's 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. On 28 October 2003, Mills gave birth to the couple's daughter, Beatrice Milly McCartney, who was named after Heather's mother, Beatrice, and McCartney's Aunt Milly.

Mills and McCartney separated in 2006, leading to an acrimonious divorce settlement, the run-up to which was played out in public, most notably in the British tabloids. In March 2008, Mills was awarded £24.3 million ($48.7 million), plus payments of £35,000 ($70,000) per annum, and nanny and school costs for their daughter, Beatrice. In his judgment, Mr Justice Bennett described Mills as a "kindly person" who is devoted to her charitable causes, with a strong-willed and determined personality, who has shown great fortitude in overcoming her disability, and who argued her case with a "steely, yet courteous, determination." He added that he regretted to say her testimony appeared "inconsistent and inaccurate", and "less than candid." During the final hearing, Mills poured a jug of water over the head of McCartney's solicitor, Fiona Shackleton.

Activism and later career

Animal rights

Mills has been actively involved with the British 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. In 2006 she attended, along with Gellatley, a debate on fur at the Oxford Union at which she presented a video depicting the skinning of a dog. Mills also 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.

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, Newfoundland and Labrador's Premier Danny Williams debated them on Larry King Live.

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.

However, a video has come to light of Mills wearing a mink coat she owned and wrote about in her autobiography; the video 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."

Mills became involved with Animal Rights group PETA through McCartney, who had been involved with them for years prior. The New York Post claims she was dropped from PETA because the "organization doesn't want to offend her ex, longtime PETA supporter Paul McCartney." A PETA representative 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."

Veganism campaign

On November 19 2007, she spoke in Hyde Park in London, arguing in favour of veganism on the grounds that livestock create more carbon emissions than transport does. She 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." Her suggestion that human beings stop drinking cow's milk and try other kinds of non-animal milk was misreported by some newspapers as a recommendation to drink rat's milk, after she said, "Especially when 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."

Mills and her friends have cited this as an example of the media's "utter lack of any integrity," because, they say, it was obvious she was arguing that drinking cows' milk is as unnatural as drinking the milk of any other animal. Viva!s founder and Mills's friend Juliet Gellatley said, "The reporters who filed this story about Heather advocating rats’ milk knew it was untrue because I amplified on what Heather had said ... One actually admitted that he understood precisely what she meant but the 'drink rats’ milk' claim made a damned good story. What this reveals is an utter lack of any integrity in most of the Press – sadly not just the tabloids but the so-called quality papers, too." Gellatley went on to say, "Every event I have attended with Heather has been grossly misreported by the Press and has involved spiteful and vicious personal attacks on her integrity and her sanity. The irony is that one of the most common accusations about Heather is that she is a fantasist and a liar – by people whose stock in trade is fantasy and lies."

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'. Heather Mills is a vice-president of Limbless Association.

Recognition

In 2003, the Open University of the United Kingdom awarded her an honorary doctorate for her philanthropic work on behalf of amputees. In 2004, she received a "Children in Need" award from the annual International Charity Gala in Düsseldorf, and in the same year, the University of California, Irvine honoured her 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.

Other

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. Mills and 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.

Mills was one of the celebrity performers showcased during the U.S. television series Dancing with the Stars in 2007. She was eliminated from the show in the sixth week of competition on April 24,2007. She donated her fee for appearing on the show to the British animal rights organization Viva!.

Public image

The attitude of the British press toward Mills, particularly after her break-up from McCartney, has been hostile and, at times, frenzied. They have accused her of embellishing her life story, of being a former prostitute, and of having married McCartney for his money. She frequently accuses them of misquoting her, or of using material out of context to give as negative as possible an impression of her.

Media speculation in the weeks before her separation from McCartney was intense, particularly in the tabloids, and included claims that she was a "gold digger," and speculation about her sex life and career before she met McCartney. She told the Evening Standard that the claims that she had married McCartney for his money were more hurtful than losing her leg.

In October 2006, she announced her intention to sue the Daily Mail, Evening Standard and The Sun. The Sun, which regularly refers to her as "Mucca" (a play on McCartney's nickname "Macca", responded by asking her to "tick the boxes" on a series of allegations the newspaper has made, stating, "It is not clear what exactly she plans to sue us about." The paper then asked: "Come on Heather, what exactly did we get wrong? Is it that you're a ..." Underneath the open question, the Sun listed 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 had received "death threats," and on December 17, 2006, police warned that a "non-specific threat" had been made to her safety. This led to more criticism that she was dialing the emergency services too often. In March 2007, Kevin Moore, Chief Superintendent of Sussex Police, said that she was running "the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf." He said, "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 responded that the police had encouraged her to contact them when she was being harassed.

Mills has been accused by several newspapers of having embellished her life story. For example, the journalist Heather Mills, then at The Observer, has accused Mills of impersonating her for over a year in the late 1990s, and the BBC reported a claim from her mother's former partner that Mills had not, in fact, run away from home as a teenager as she had earlier claimed.

The tabloid newspaper, the News of the World, has alleged that she was involved in prostitution during an earlier period of her life. Mills has strongly denied the allegation, and has said that the article caused her great distress.

During several interviews in October 2007, Mills accused the media of giving her "worse press than a paedophile or a murderer". She also criticized the media over the treatment of the late Princess Diana – who, according to Mills, was "chased and killed" by paparazzi – and of Kate McCann. Immediately before giving these interviews, her PR adviser, Phil Hall, quit. She then went to the U.S. where she gave a number of further televised interviews, saying that the divorce was largely brought about by her husband. She further alleged that the breakdown of the marriage was caused by Stella McCartney, whom she described as "jealous" and "evil".

Criticism of the press coverage

The extent and nature of the British press coverage of Mills has been criticized. Headlines about her typically include words such as "whore," "hysterical," or "liar," and photographs are routinely chosen that show her from awkward angles. Feminist writer Natasha Walter has compared the coverage to that of Britney Spears, and Kira Cochrane, writing in The Guardian, has said that "every misogynist epithet available" has been used against Mills. "She has somehow become the vessel through which it is acceptable for both pundits and the public to express their very worst feelings about women."

Cristina Odone has said Mills is "a good-looking woman who does not play by the rules," and that this makes people, male and female, suspicious of her. "e do not expect someone who has suffered a tragic accident, and an accident that has affected her looks and therefore her livelihood, to get up, dust herself off, one-legged, and ... snag herself a multimillionaire rock singer".

Cochrane writes that Mills has passed through the full gamut of the stereotypical roles reserved for women. When she first came to public attention, she was the "saint" for her work with landmine victims; she became the "muse" when McCartney fell in love with her; the "gold-digger" when the relationship deepened; the "evil stepmother" and the "second wife" when they married; and finally, when they split up, the "whore."

Publications

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

Notes

1. ^ "Heather Mills: Can't buy me love", BBC News, June 7, 2002.
2. Mills McCartney, Heather. A Single Step. NY: Hachette Book Group, 1995.
3. "Pageant judge Heather Mills", MonstersandCritics.com, March 17, 2008.
4. "Heather Mills' explicit photos", MonstersandCritics.com, November 19, 2007.
5. "Model's damages 'waste of money'", BBC News, April 13, 2000.
6. "Mills removes false leg on live TV", BBC News, November 1, 2002.
7. "Heather Mills in 1994 helping amputees in Croatia", YouTube, retrieved March 21, 2008.
8. ^ "Sir Paul: How I proposed", BBC News, July 27, 2001.
9. Young, Robin (2000-10-20). "I saw her standing there, McCartney explains on TV". Times Online. The Times. Retrieved 2008-03-17. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
10. "Mills awarded £24.3m settlement". BBC News. BBC. 2008-03-17. Retrieved 2008-03-17. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
11. McCartney v McCartney", EWHC 401 (Fam), March 17, 2008.
12. Mills soaked McCartney's lawyer, BBC News.
13. "Viva".
14. '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.
15. "Heather Mills in pig farm raid to highlight 'cruelty'".
16. "Viva".
17. "Transcript of CNN LARRY KING LIVE: Interview With Paul McCartney, Heather Mills McCartney, 3 March 2006". cnn.com. 2006-03-03. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
18. "Fur is dead".
19. "Female first".
20. Viva!Life, Issue 29, Summer 2005.
21. "New York Post".
22. "Daily Telegraph".
23. "New York Post".
24. "Daily Telegraph".
25. "viva.org.uk".
26. "Sun man faces Mucca on her rats milk claims", Heather Mills press conference, The Sun, YouTube, retrieved March 21, 2008.
27. "Drink rats' milk, says Heather Mills", The Daily Telegraph, November 21, 2007.
28. "heathermillsmccartney.com".
29. 'Heather’s “Drink Rats’ Milk” Claim is Wilful Misreporting, says Viva!', Viva!
30. "Heather Mills".
31. "The Nexus".
32. "Limbless Association".
33. Open University
34. "Heather Mills set to go ‘Dancing with the Stars’", MSNBC, February 21, 2007.
35. VVF's VeggieHealth magazine, Issue 13, Spring 2007; Clark, Cindy. "McCartney and Mills from the beginning", USA Today, undated, retrieved March 21, 2008.
36. "BBC News".
37. "BBC News".
38. "Lady McCartney to sue newspapers - BBC News".
39. Guardian.co.uk
40. "Police brief Mills over 'threat'", BBC News, December 17, 2006.
41. "BBC News".
42. "BBC News".
43. "BBC News".
44. Hoyle, Ben. "Heather Mills stole my name, says journalist", The Times, October 23, 2006.
45. MATT BORN, Daily Mail. "Heather was a high-class hooker paid thousands".
46. GMTV, This Morning and BBC News 24
47. Heather Mills: I'll die like Princess Diana (The Sun Online)
48. "Stella McCartney Evil, says Heather Mills". news.com.au. Retrieved 2008-03-18.
49. ^ Cochrane, Kira. "Why we love to hate Heather", The Guardian, March 20, 2008.

External links

• Heather Mills
• Heather Mills at the Internet Movie Database

• 1968 births
• English amputees
• Animal rights movement
• English female models
• Living people
• People from Aldershot
• People from Washington, Tyne and Wear
• Paul McCartney
• English vegans
• Dancing with the Stars (US TV series) participants