Mel Mills: A British actor and bodybuilder who found happiness in Bulgaria
British actor and bodybuilder Mel Mills has worked in many fields and led a fascinating life, but it was in a small village in Bulgaria that he found a home 11 years ago.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I came here on holiday. On my second day, I think, on my second day,
00:06having been out and explored and already fallen in love with what I'd seen,
00:13got the opportunity to buy a house.
00:18British citizen Mel Mills has led a fascinating life and worked in a number of different
00:23professions. He's been a gamekeeper, actor, bodybuilder and even worked for the Ministry
00:28of Justice in the UK. Eleven years ago, he decided to settle in Bulgaria. He bought a
00:36house in the small village of Obrociste near the Black Sea coast. He still occasionally
00:41travels back home to the UK where his passion for animals, cinema and sport was born.
00:46I left school and my first job actually was
00:50as a gamekeeper. So I was raising pheasants and partridges and ducks and the like. And then after
01:00that I applied and joined a government agency, Ministry of Justice. Boys? There's more than one.
01:13Mel, the actor, began when I was 14 years of age. I was part of a group of school kids that
01:23during the summer holidays were getting bored and we decided that we would buy a small camera
01:29and make films. TV stations and newspapers picked up on it because we were actually
01:34making feature films. In Bulgaria, Mills occasionally teaches acting to students
01:39in the city of Varna. He has also written and directed a full-length movie featuring
01:44his students and highlighting the beauty of the country. I proposed the idea that we make a feature
01:52film. They will get the lead roles of course. We're in Bulgaria, you'll be Bulgarians, you'll
01:59be speaking English. Mills is in his late 50s. After taking early retirement, he originally
02:06planned to move to Croatia but eventually settled on Bulgaria. He diligently studies
02:11Bulgarian every day, determined to learn the language of his chosen home. It is estimated
02:17that between 7,000 and 10,000 British citizens have permanent residence in Bulgaria. Many come
02:23after retirement because house prices and the cost of living are much lower than they are in the UK.
02:29Mills knows that the infrastructure in Bulgaria is not particularly good
02:33and that the political situation is pretty chaotic but that doesn't bother him.
02:38So what was it that attracted him to this corner of Europe?
02:42The number one attraction is the nature. I love nature, I grew up in nature and
02:50there is not a week go by where I don't come see something that I've not seen before,
02:57identify some bird I've not managed to see before, some that I dreamed about seeing when I was a kid
03:02and I never did get to see them. I came here and gosh, there they all are. Mills says that he has
03:08led a long and fulfilling life and has nothing to prove to anyone anymore. He says that although
03:15far from his native home, he has everything he needs right here. Statistics say that Bulgaria
03:21is one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the European Union but for this Brit, it is
03:26heaven on earth.
03:32you