Biography
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Born
5 June 1944 (age 79)
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Born In
Cairo, Al Qāhirah, Egypt
Gillian Hills (born: June 5, 1944 in Cairo, Egypt) is a French-English actress and singer. The main period of her singing career took place in France as a ye-ye girl, spanning the first half of the 1960s,. She was discovered in France by Roger Vadim in 1958, but made "Beat Girl", her first film, in England. Beat Girl (1960) is about a rebellious girl who goes out to nightclubs where rock & roll music plays. Adam Faith also had a part in the movie.
Quickly typed as "the British Bardot," Gillian lived between France (her mother was French-Polish) and England (her father was the English traveller, author, and adventurer Denis Hills). She recorded six EPs for the Barclay label between 1960 and 1964 and one more for AZ Records in 1965. After 1965 she focussed solely on her acting career, turning up alongside Jane Birkin in the film "Blow Up" and playing a minor role in "A Clockwork Orange". She retired from acting in 1972 and moved to New York to work as a book and magazine illustrator.
Fondness for French pop singers from the '60s ye-ye girls has kept her singles in the public ear, and along with her counterparts in the USA or the UK, from Nancy Sinatra to Petula Clark, Gillian Hills continues to bring us back to an era when "cool" was fresh. In 2012, “Zou Bisou Bisou” was chosen for the premier of the fifth season of the hit American TV series Mad Men.
In 2018, after a 53-year hiatus, Hills made a comeback with the trip-hop song NeferTiti. She is currently in the studio working on her forthcoming album which she is co-writing with producer Peter Vettese who has worked with Simple Minds, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Bee Gees, Robin Gibb, Foreigner, Gary Barlow, Carly Simon, Dido and Annie Lennox to name just a few.
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