Heather Mills
- Profession: Gold digger
- Place/Date of Birth: Aldershot, Hampshire, 12 January 2021
- Associated with: Paul McCartney
"Every time I go into hospital to a nine-year-old girl who thinks that she’s suddenly not going to ever have a boyfriend, be attractive, get married or dance again, I can say, ’You can do all those things’, pop the video in and say, ’With the right leg you can glide round the room like this’," the former model said.
"It changes that person’s life: boy, girl, man, woman."
She added: "What I want to do is show that you can get out there and do anything with an artificial leg.
"I mean, we’ve got people with two legs missing running the 100 metres in 11.3 seconds."
She would not discuss her ongoing divorce battle with Sir Paul and insisted she was not nervous about the dance contest.
"I don’t really get nervous unless I’m going to meet potential mother-in-laws, so that’s not going to be happening."
Heather back at High Court - Mar 7 2007
Heather Mills was back at the High Court, days after attending a private hearing in her divorce battle with Sir Paul McCartney.
The former model arrived unannounced at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London shortly after 2pm.
It’s understood that she is to make an application before High Court judge Mr Justice Singer, but the details of what it entails are not known.
Heather was seen outside Court 32 where the judge is sitting to hear "urgent High Court applications".
A member of her entourage said she wouldn’t be making any comment.
Last Thursday, both she and former Beatle Paul attended the High Court for a private hearing.
While Paul, who is said to be worth £825 million, appeared chirpy when he left the Queen’s Building, smiling and whistling, Heather made a low-key exit.
The hearing last week, held before Mr Justice Bennett, was strictly in private but was believed to be a preliminary action before the main divorce case.
Heather joins US dancing show - Feb 21 2007
Heather Mills will be a contestant on US TV show Dancing With The Stars, it was announced today.
The estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney, who lost her left leg in an accident 14 years ago, will compete on the American version of Strictly Come Dancing from next month.
Heather’s appearance on the hugely popular ABC show comes during her bitter divorce battle with the former Beatle.
The one-time model, 38, and Sir Paul, 64, announced in May that they were ending their four-year marriage.
Chat show host and previous Dancing With The Stars contestant Jerry Springer announced she would be taking part on ABC’s Good Morning America.
A source close to the show said it was understood Heather planned to donate much of her fee to charity.
Her spokesman, Phil Hall, said: "She loves dancing and she enjoys a challenge so it’s the best of both worlds."
He added Heather wasn’t worried about the physical demands of the show.
"She’s very fit," he said. "She dances, she runs, she rides a bike. She believes she’ll be capable of handling it."
Previous contestants in the US show have included former heavyweight boxing champ Evander Holyfield, Rod Stewart’s ex-wife model Rachel Hunter and perma-tanned actor George Hamilton.
Heather will be up against American celebs including basketball star Clyde Drexler, Muhammad Ali’s boxing daughter Laila and country singer Billy Ray Cyrus.
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Heather Mills has definitely got one hell of a story, she was born in 1968, her mother left the family home when she nine, leaving Heather to care for her siblings under the watchful eye of an abusive father. Heather ran away from home at thirteen and found herself homeless, living under Waterloo arches for four months.
She was eventually "discovered" and started modelling, it wasn’t long after that at the age of 22, that she moved to Northern Yugoslavia, now Slovenia, for a holiday and eventually ended up moving there to build a new life and become a ski instructor. Whilst out there she witnessed the outbreak of civil war and the effect it had on many of her friends. On her return to England she set up a refugee crisis centre, funded by the modelling work that she was still doing, she continued her charity work over the next two years when tragedy struck, on a visit to the UK.
In August 1993, Heather was involved in a road accident with a police motorcycle. Her injuries included crushed ribs, a punctured lung, and multiple fractures of the pelvis and the loss of her left leg below the knee. Realising her modelling career would now possibly be over, she summoned the press into her hospital room and sold her story.
Through the adjustment of returning to ’normal’ life with one leg, Heather found a practical problem that she felt she could solve. Her residual limb, or stump as she prefers to call it, was fitted with an artificial limb. But due to the nature of the wound changing in shape and size, the prosthetic leg had to be continually replaced, whilst the old leg would be discarded. Heather realised that if the redundant prosthesis would never find another use, there must be literally thousands out there just waiting for a new home. With her experiences in the former Yugoslavia, Heather knew that these redundant limbs would be more than welcome in areas such as the Former Yugoslavia.
Heather instigated a nation-wide appeal for the donation of unwanted prostheses, and then employed the services of the inmates at Brixton prison to dismantle the limbs and make them ready for transport. October 1994, just a year after her accident, the first convoy of artificial limbs and medical equipment left for Zargreb. Arriving at the Institute of Prosthetics in Zargreb the limbs were now ready to be fitted. Over 22,000 amputees and victims of land-mine explosions have been helped since the first Convoy left the U.K.
It was not long after that at the young age of 25 that Heather wrote her biography, whilst most 25 year olds could hardly fill a chapter, Heather had a real story to tell. ’Out on a Limb’ landed straight onto The Times’ best-seller list as well as appearing in the 1997 Reader’s Digest Best non-fiction compilation. The proceeds from the book go to raising money for child amputee war victim’s world-wide (although the most publicised are in the Former Yugoslavia). All Heather’s charity work has funded from her own pocket.
Heather has been given many accolades and awards for her work for charity. Former Prime Minister John Major presented her with the Gold Award for Outstanding Achievement; The Times presented her with their Human Achievement Award, and the British Chamber of Commerce not only named her Outstanding Young Person of the Year, but also named an award after her - the Heather Mills Award. If this was not enough, in 1996 she received a nomination for The Nobel Prize and has since received the 1999 "People of the Year Award", The "Cosmopolitan Woman of Achievement 2000 Award", The "Pantene Spirit of Beauty Award" and the "Woman of the Year" by the Blue Drop Group in Sicily as well as lots more.
Heather collected the "REDBROOK Mother & Shakers Award", presented by Hillary Clinton, and she received the Victory Award hosted by the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington DC.
If that was not enough, Heather has also done a lot of TV work presenting for programmes such as That’s Esther.
In her personal life, she found temporary happiness with ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney. Despite some rather obvious objections from Paul’s daughter Stella, the couple married in 2002 and had a daughter together.
In 2006 both Paul and Heather made a joint statement confirming their separation, after Paul McCartney filed for divorce, citing ‘unreasonable behaviour’. What has followed has been a media storm, with Heather at the heart of the controversy.
The main allegations is that she merely married Sir Paul for his money and fame, with British papers suggesting that this could be the biggest divorce settlement ever witnessed. Heather has always denied the allegation of being a ‘gold digger’, claiming that the separation and process of divorce is ‘worse than losing my leg’.
Alongside her threat to sue national papers over ‘false, damaging and immensely upsetting’ reports about the divorce, it has also been reported that Heather has received death threats since splitting with her husband.
In January 2003, a settlement was announced between the two parties, believed to amount to £32 million, plus a gagging order.
November 2007