Teenaged model Millie Perkins was brought to Hollywood in a torrent of publicity when she was selected over hundreds of other applicants to play the starring role in George Stevens' 1959 filmization of Diary of Anne Frank. A 20th Century Fox contract resulted from this auspicious debut, but Diary remained her career high point. Periodically retiring from films in the 1960s, Perkins was briefly brought back before the cameras for 1968's Wild in the Streets, which was scripted by her second husband, Robert Thom, (her first was Dean Stockwell). Millie Perkins continued to make sporadic film appearances into the 1990s, notably as Charlie Sheen's mother in Wall Street (1987); she also played the mother of Elvis Presley (with whom she co-starred in 1961's Wild in the Country) on the 1990 TV series Elvis.
by Hal Erickson
biography
