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Anneke Wills (born 20 October 1941 in Berkshire, is a British actress noted for her role as the companion Polly in the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.)
The daughter of a Dutch-born Parisian catwalk model and a Harrow educated artist descended from Elizabethan sea lord Sir Richard Grenville. Her parents Anna and Alaric Willys (she later changed her name to Wills) had planned to buy a house in the South of France but World War II ended that idea. Alaric was a gambler whose severe debts forced Anna to take on a string of jobs while he became a captain in the British army and an absent figure. Anna worked as a companion to a blind aristocrat, gardener, teacher - moving Anneke and her brother Robin around the country several times. Anneke won her first role at the age of 11 while she was living on a houseboat in Bray, Berkshire. The film was called Child's Play and she gave the £9 fee to her mother. Deciding she wanted to be an actress she then studied drama at the Arts Educational School in London and quickly became one of the busiest actresses of her generation, early roles included an appearance as Roberta in the first TV version of The Railway Children in 1957. She appeared as The Doctor's companion Polly, in Doctor Who from 1966 to 1967 alongside both William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton as the Doctor. (According to the DVD featurette Doctor Who Origins, she was also one of the actresses considered to play the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman). Wills left the series for fear of being typecast. Other television credits include appearances in The Avengers, and as Evelyn in Strange Report. However she left the latter the series when filming was planned to be move to Hollywood. She now lives in Devon, and the first volume of her autobiography "Self Portrait" was released on 1st October 2007.
Personal life
One of Anneke Wills' early boyfriends was Daphne du Maurier's son, Kits Browning, but it was Edward Fox who was her first love. At 17 she began a relationship with Anthony Newley while working on the TV series The Strange World of Gurney Slade. She became pregnant while Newley while filming in the America where he met Joan Collins. He communicated through his manager that she was to abort the four and a half month pregnancy. Despite his new relationship with Collins, they continued to see each other and when Wills became pregnant again she insisted on keeping the baby. By this time, she met Michael Gough, the actor who would later play Alfred Pennyworth in four Batman films and The Celestial Toymaker in Doctor Who. During the sixties Wills spent much of her time at the famous Troubadour Coffee Shop and The Establishment, and was part of the so-called Chelsea Set, counting among her close friends Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, The Alberts, Sammy Davis Junior, Angela Douglas and Kenneth More, Mary Quant, Sarah Miles and many more leading lights of the sixties. After Gough divorced his second wife, they married at Fulham register office on Valentine's Day 1965. Her daughter Polly had already been born and was later adopted by Gough. At the time of the wedding she was pregnant with their son, Jasper. A year later she was offered her role in Doctor Who and life seemed perfect for the young actress. However after leaving Strange Report her professional acting career drew to a close, she moved to Norfolk with Gough and found an Elizabethan farmhouse, which they bought and she threw herself into motherhood and gardening. For years they were happy but when Gough started work at the National Theatre and returned to Norfolk only on weekends, the strain began to tell. He was also womanising and though, as with Newley, Wills initially let this slide, the situation deteriorated. After two years of trying to keep the marriage together, they admitted defeat and divorced. She walked away from the marriage without asking for any alimony. Her next move was to take a meditation course in London, which led to her find out about the teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Leaving Polly, who was then 14, boarding at a Rudolf Steiner school in East Sussex, she took 12 year old Jasper with her to India, donning the orange robes of Bhagwan's cult followers and joining his ashram. Free love was the order of the day, however, Wills was more interested in meditation. After initial doubt of her decision, she settled down and stayed in the ashram from 1975 to 1981. At one stage she spent ten days blindfolded, on a cushion. She then followed Bhagwan and his disciples to Oregon, where she subsisted by cleaning houses. Wills paid a man $1000 to marry her, so she could set up an interior design business. The marriage was in name only and the business didn't work out. In 1991 Wills met a 35 year-old deep-sea diver and after paying for him to go to drama school, he left her for a 23-year old fellow student. Wills declared herself finished with love and returned to England in 1996, first moving to a little cottage in Purbeck, Dorset belonging to Edward Fox (with whom she is still friends), then to Devon where she now lives.
