Crispian Mills

His mother, Hayley Mills, had made her name as a child star in the 1960s, and met Mills' father, Roy Boulting, on the set of light British comedy The Family Way.

Boulting was 33 years Hayley Mills' senior, and only five years younger than her father, Sir John Mills.

The pair married in 1971.

The family lived on Belgrade Road, in the south-west London district of Hampton, and had an additional property at Cobstone Windmill at Ibstone, Buckinghamshire.

Crispian Mills (born 18 January 1973 as Crispian John David Boulting; spiritual name Krishna Kantha Das) is an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and film director.

Mills was born on 18 January 1973 in Hammersmith, London, England.

The marriage did not last, and the pair split in 1975, followed by an official divorce in 1977.

At this point, Hayley was pregnant again by actor Leigh Lawson with her second son, Jason.

The new family shared their time between Hampton and Lawson's Coventry residence.

Hayley put her career on hold to raise her sons during their early years, a sacrifice which to this day, Mills values very highly.

The young Mills believed his grandfather to be a genuine knight in shining armour.

Sir John can also be credited with introducing Mills to music, by singing old cowboy songs to send him to sleep as a child.

Mills would go on to cover one of those songs, "Rio Grande" with his post-Kula Shaker band The Jeevas.

"I count myself to be very fortunate," says Mills, "in having been brought up by people who are very open-minded and who are genuinely in love with the arts. If I've inherited anything from my family, it's that love of the creative process and that awareness of the privilege which being a part of it represents. That comes from my father too... I couldn't escape from it, and never felt I wanted to."

Mills attended various schools, some private, some state run, as his mother was frequently travelling for film work.

Active since 1988, Mills is best known as the frontman of the psychedelic indie rock band Kula Shaker.

Following the band's break-up in 1999, he remained with Columbia Records (a subsidiary of Sony BMG), and toured with a set of session musicians (including a support slot for Robbie Williams) under the name Pi, although no official studio recordings were released in full.

After the label rejected the Pi album, Mills disappeared for a short time, returning in 2002 as frontman and lead guitarist for back-to-basics rock outfit The Jeevas, who disbanded in 2005 to make way for a reformed Kula Shaker, who released their third album Strangefolk in 2007.

In 2010 he released the album Pilgrims Progress with Kula Shaker.

Speaking in an interview in 2016, Mills says "When I was in private schools, they called me 'common', and when I was in state schools they called me 'posh'. It made me very cynical about all these labels".

His background meant that family friends were people like Richard Attenborough and Sir Laurence Olivier, although Mills has often remarked that he was rarely star-struck as they were "just people" to one accustomed to the company of famous actors.

As a result of this, and his mother's experiences as a child actress, the young Mills believed that making films was to be his next step.

"I grew up with pictures of my mum looking very very young, standing with John Wayne or Walt Disney. That did something to my head; I thought that was kind of normal. That's what happens: you get to 12, you start making movies. It was only when I got to 12 that I realised, obviously, that wasn't the case."

It was around this time when Mills first started to consider ideas of spirituality and mortality.

"If I ever had a Road-to-Damascus, it was when I was 11," he recalls.

"I woke up one night, at home in bed, and realised I was going to die. I don't mean 'tomorrow' or 'in a year'. It wasn't a prediction. It was just suddenly understanding fully that death would come. I remember talking about it at the time. Everyone thought there was something wrong with me."

To address these new feelings on life and death, Mills borrowed the Mahābhārata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, from his mother, and took to reading it.

He also became vegetarian, although concedes that this was largely due to meeting "a really attractive girl who was vegetarian".

Throughout his youth, Mills had been exposed to a wide variety of music.

One of his earliest musical memories was "Puff, the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary, which he believes "summed up [his] childhood".

As a general rule, Mills uninspired by the then-current music scene, found that he was able to identify with older records, which he felt had honesty and genuine youth.

However he singled out "Stand and Deliver" by Adam and the Ants – the first single he ever bought – by virtue of its drama and longevity.

In terms of albums, his first purchase was "Too Tough to Die" by the Ramones.

However, it was hearing "You Really Got Me" by English rock group The Kinks that inspired him to become a guitarist.

"It was like walking into a temple, a moment when my life changed," he says.

"I'd grown up listening to Boy George and Duran Duran on the radio. But Really Got Me. Chung! This is your destiny! After that, as soon as I picked up a guitar, all I wanted to do was become brilliant. I practised, I studied tapes, I was a guitar worshipper."

Through the guitar, Mills also discovered Deep Purple, and has cited their lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore as a major influence on his style.

In 2017 the band celebrated the 20th anniversary of their album K with the release of the new record K 2.0.

Mills joined the band for a sold-out UK tour to celebrate the anniversary.

Mills is the son of actress Hayley Mills and director Roy Boulting, the grandson of Sir John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, nephew of Juliet Mills and directors John Boulting and Jonathan Mills, and half-brother to Jason Lawson.