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Gillian Hills (born 5 June 1944 in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt) is an English actress and Yé-Yé/pop singer. She is the daughter of teacher, traveller, author, and adventurer Denis Hills and and the daughter of an actress Wanda "Dunia" Leśmianówna, daughter of Polish poet Bolesław Leśmian. She spent her early years in Nice (France), where she was discovered at 14 by Roger Vadim, the director of And God Created Woman and Barbarella, who saw her as the next Brigitte Bardot and cast her in a version of Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959). In 1960, Hills cut her first recordings with Henri Salvador, "Près De La Cascade" and "Cha Cha Stop", for the French Barclay record label on an EP entitled "Allo Brigitte? Ne coupez pas!". In 1961, she appeared at the Olympia Theatre in Paris on a bill with Johnny Hallyday. She remained with the Barclay label until 1964, having released both cover versions and original self-penned recordings. In 1963, Serge Gainsbourg wrote for Hills his first duet for a yé-yé singer, "Une Petite Tasse D'anxiété", which they sang together on the French TV show Teuf Teuf. In 1965, she signed to the AZ record label run by the radio station Europe 1 and issued an EP that included "Rentre Sans Moi", a French cover of the Zombies' "Leave Me Be" and her self-penned "Rien N'Est Changé". At the close of her recording career, Hills returned to England and film, appearing in Michelangelo Antonioni's first English language film Blowup (1966), starring David Hemmings, with whom her character and that of Jane Birkin shared an energetic romp. Blowup won the Grand Prix at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. Next came a play by David Storey at The Royal Court Theatre, The Restoration of Arnold Middleton, director Robert Kidd, followed by the film version of John Osborne's play Inadmissible Evidence (1968), directed by Anthony Page, in which she plays the part of Joy. Hills appears in writer James Salter's only film as a director, the mystery romance Three (1969). Hills also starred as Alison in The Owl Service (1969), a television adaptation of the Alan Garner novel. In 1970, Georges Franju chose her to play the part of Albine opposite Francis Huster in La Faute de l'abbé Mouret, adapted from a novel by Émile Zola. Other film appearances followed, including a cameo in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), in which Hills played one of two girls picked up in a record shop by Alex (Malcolm McDowell). She replaced Marianne Faithfull in the 1972 horror Demons of the Mind for Hammer Film Productions. In 1972, Hills decided to stop making films. She moved to New York to work as a book and magazine illustrator. Her first book cover was Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women; her last book cover was for Alice Walker's The Color Purple, published by Washington Press.
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