Heather, Lady McCartney - Models
Summary
"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".
Biography
Early life and family
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 alleged that she found herself homeless. Jack Mills denied these claims.
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.http://www.heathermills.org/factfiction.php 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. (... more)
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.
Career
Glamour model
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.
Television projects
Mills was one of the celebrity performers showcased during the U.S. television series "Dancing with the Stars" in 2007. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17257926/ 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!. VVF's VeggieHealth magazine, Issue 13, Spring 2007.
Activism
Animal rights
Mills is an activist for several causes, particularly against the use of landmines, vegetarianism, and animal rights.
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".
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.'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.
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 McCartney 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.'Viva!Life, Issue 29, Summer 2005.
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.
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.
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."
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'.
Recognition
In 2003 the Open University of the United Kingdom awarded her an honorary doctorate for this.
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.
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.
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.
Personal struggle
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.http://www.heathermills.org/factfiction.php 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 said she arranged for prostheses to be sent from the United Kingdom to the war-torn former Yugoslavia.
Public image
Personal life
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.
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. }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Heather, Lady McCartney.
