- At age 92, he and wife Mary, age 89, renewed their marriage vows at St. Mary's Church, next to their home, Hills House, in Denham, England. When they had wed 60 years earlier, he was denied a church service because he was serving in the Army during World War II. (January 2001)
- He was a close friend of the English actor/director Richard Attenborough, who read the eulogy at his funeral.
- He and his first wife Aileen Raymond both died in April 2005, 73 years after they were married.
- His wife of 64 years, Mary Hayley Bell, suffered from Alzheimer's disease for many years. Due to the advanced stage of her illness, she was unable to attend his funeral on April 27, 2005.
- He is credited with playing more military roles than any other star. In 31 of his movies, almost a third of his whole cinematic output, he portrayed soldiers, usually officers.
- Prior to his death he had planned on attending The 32nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards (2005) where his daughter Juliet Mills was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for playing Tabitha Lennox in Passions (1999).
- Of the Oscar-winning father-daughter couples, he and his daughter Hayley Mills are one of two couples (the other is Jane Fonda/Henry Fonda) where the daughter won an Academy award before the father did.
- Died seven days after his In Which We Serve (1942), The October Man (1947), This Happy Breed (1944) and Tunes of Glory (1960) co-star, Kay Walsh.
- Mills' greatest American stage success was as T. E. Lawrence in "Ross." Mills had met the real Lawrence in 1931 through good friend Noel Coward when he was appearing in "Cavalcade.".
- Although his eyesight failed almost completely in 1990, he continued to act, playing both blind and seeing characters.
- When he won the 1971 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, Mills was the only winner present at the ceremony to accept his acting award. The other three winners of Academy Awards for acting that year, George C. Scott, Glenda Jackson, and Helen Hayes, didn't attend the ceremony.
- He always maintained his favorite movie was Tunes of Glory (1960), in which he co-starred with Alec Guinness.
- He appeared in two Best Picture Academy Award winners: Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and Gandhi (1982). John Gielgud and Trevor Howard also appeared in both films. John Mills also appeared in three other Best Picture nominees: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), In Which We Serve (1942) and Great Expectations (1946).
- Enlisted in the Royal Engineers in 1940 but received a medical discharge after a year and a half due to a duodenal ulcer.
- He appeared in five films with Richard Attenborough: In Which We Serve (1942), Operation Disaster (1950), The Baby and the Battleship (1956), Dunkirk (1958) and Hamlet (1996). He also appeared in three films directed by Attenborough: Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Young Winston (1972) and Gandhi (1982).
- He was voted ninth in the 2001 Orange Film Survey of greatest British actors.
- Acording to Mills in the 'Films in Review' career article on him in August 1971, he was offered the Burgess Meredith role in "Of Mice and Men" and the Humphrey Bogart role in "The African Queen.".
- He played the uncle of his real life daughter Juliet Mills in The Human Fly (1971).
- Was nominated for Broadway's 1962 Tony Award as Best Actor (Dramatic) for "Ross."
- There is 16mm footage of Mills in the 1932 stage show "Words and Music" alongside Doris Hare. The show was written by Noël Coward.
- Despite being two of Britain's most distinguished actors of their generation, he appeared in only two films with Alec Guinness: Great Expectations (1946) and Tunes of Glory (1960).
- More than 400 stars of stage and screen took part in an event organized by the Lord's Taverners charity, of which he was the founding president in 1950, at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, south east London to honor his illustrious career and recent Diamond wedding anniversary. (21 February 2001)
- Father-in-law of Maxwell Caulfield.
- According to Mills, the only reason he saw his quota quickie "The Lash" is because it was on a double bill with something that Spencer Tracy was acting in.
- Laurence Olivier offered Mills the role of one of the murderers in Richard III (1955) but he turned it down, believing that it could be seen as stunt casting.
- He was a close friend of Stephen Fry.
- He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1960 Queen's New Year Honours List and became a Knight Bachelor in the 1976 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours for his services to drama.
- Younger brother of Annette Mills.
- Suffered a bad fall at his Buckinghamshire home, breaking two ribs, and was kept overnight in hospital as a precaution. (November 2001)
- He directed a number of his wife's plays.
- His favourite directors were David Lean, Carol Reed, William Wyler, and Bryan Forbes.
- His first wife, Aileen Raymond, survived him by five days and she was the mother of the actor Ian Ogilvy.
- A council member of RADA, he was also a life patron of the Variety Club.
- In the encyclopedic compendium "OSCAR A to Z" by Charles Matthews, it is falsely stated that Mills died in 1982.
- He never retired from acting and did so right up until his passing at the age of ninety-seven.
- Ranked #88 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. (October 1997)
- He was educated at Norwich Grammar School for Boys.
- In 1967, he appeared in "The Great Escape" themed episode of The Golden Shot (1967), hosted by Bob Monkhouse.
- Mills' first professional appearance was as a chorus boy in a Hippodrome show "The Five O'Clock Revue" with Ernest Truex in 1927.
- According to his list of films in his autobiography 'Up In the Clouds Gentlemen Please' he was asked to make 3 film documentaries for the British Government at Ealing Studios in 1949. These were 'Big Blockade', 'All Hands'and 'Careless Talk'.
- His favourite films in which he appeared were Hobson's Choice, Great Expectations, and Tunes of Glory,.
- He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
- According to a filmography in 1949 he did the narration on two short films 'Friend of the Family' and 'Flying Skyscaper' The same filmography lists him in the 1991 film 'The Last Straw' which was unreleased.
- He had two roles in common with his The Baby and the Battleship (1956) co-star André Morell: (1) Morell played Dr. John Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) while Mills played him in Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984) and (2) Morell played Professor Bernard Quatermass in Quatermass and the Pit (1958) while Mills played him in Quatermass (1979).
- With Richard Attenborough he ran the '500 Restaurant and club in Albermarle Street in London.
- Although several obituaries and news reports of his death quote a trustee of his estate, saying Mills had "been ill for about a month with a chest infection", this does not necessarily indicate this as the actual cause of his death. Some other reports simply say he died following a "short" or "brief illness". However, his 2009 entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which cites his death certificate) states that he died "following a stroke.".
- Hospitalised with a severe chest infection in August 2002.
- He was rejected by the army during World War II because of a duodenal ulcer.
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