Gillian Hills

Gillian Hills is a British actress and singer who first drew attention as a teenager in British films of the 1960s. Born in Cairo and raised in Nice, she was spotted there at 14 by Roger Vadim, and at 15 she led the cast of Beat Girl (1960), which had John Barry's first film score and a young Adam Faith in his debut screen role. She also spent years in France building a singing career, scoring hits with Ma première cigarette and Zou bisou bisou, and in 1963 Serge Gainsbourg wrote a duet for her. She came back to England for Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966), appeared at the Royal Court in David Storey's The Restoration of Arnold Middleton, and played Alison in the television adaptation The Owl Service (1969). Her later films included The Demise of Father Mouret and Demons of the Mind (1972), and she left filmmaking to become a book and magazine illustrator in New York.