Never Meet Your Idols, They Say—Unless Your Idol Is Donna Mills

Where do you start a conversation with Donna Mills?

Her breakout film role in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 thriller Play Misty for Me features one of the few tasteful scenes of female nudity during a Hollywood love scene. She put a thriving career on pause to raise an adopted daughter at the age of 54. She remains one of Hollywood’s foremost authorities on eye makeup. (According to Mills, uber-producer Ryan Murphy instructed the makeup artists on Doctor Odyssey to watch her famed tutorials prior to her guest appearance.)

“I’ve seen very little of the backstabbing everybody talks about,” she tells me of her decades-long Hollywood career. “I’ve seen people who work together and care about each other and care about what they’re making.”

There’s also her vineyard, which sits on the woodsy hill