Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Millie grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey and attended Fair Lawn High School. Her father was a merchant marine captain. Perkins was working as a receptionist at a New York City advertising agency when she caught the eye of a visiting photographer with a resultant career as a model; by 1958, Perkins was an international cover girl. In 1958, she was vigorously pursued, and then selected, to appear in her first film, The Diary of Anne Frank.

After her work with George Stevens, Perkins was placed under contract to 20th Century Fox. She was one of the promising young stars of Hollywood, but the studio contract system, which was coming to an end, was a poor fit for Perkins, who had come of age with the Beat Generation in 1950s New York City. George Stevens would later state: “Millie did not fit in. She was 10 years too early.” Suspended for refusing the lead in the 1960 film Tess of the Storm Country – Perkins saw the film as a B-picture and a step back career-wise – Perkins was cast by 20th Century Fox in the 1961 film Wild in the Country, playing the supporting role of the girlfriend to star Elvis Presley – she would later play Gladys Presley in the 1990 miniseries Elvis; the studio then dropped Perkins. Joshua Logan personally selected Perkins for the female lead in the 1964 film Ensign Pulver, but the film was a failure; Perkins would not appear in another mainstream film release for almost 20 years. She played the female lead in both of Jack Nicholson’s inaugural productions The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind – shot side by side in 1965 – and in 1968 co-starred in Wild in the Streets which was written by her then-husband Robert Thom.

On April 15, 1960, she married actor Dean Stockwell. They divorced on July 30, 1962. She later married writer and director Robert Thom, who wrote the script for the popular 1968 movie Wild in the Streets, in which she appeared. They had two children: Lillie Thom (b. 1966) and Hedy Thom (b. 1969). Perkins and Thom had been separated for some time when Thom died in 1979.

Perkins made her television debut in 1961 as a guest star on Wagon Train. As with her film work, her television appearances were sporadic until the 1980s, from when she had appeared on a variety of television shows, including seven episodes of Knots Landing (over the period 1983–1990) and four episodes of Any Day Now (1998–2002). She portrayed character Glenda Vandervere in Murder, She Wrote (season two, episode 12: “Murder by Appointment Only”) (01/05/1986). Perkins retired from acting after a 2006 six-episode arc on the television soap opera The Young and the Restless. Recent to her retirement, she was honored in the 2004 action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which one of the storyline girlfriends to protagonist Carl “CJ” Johnson, voiced by Orfeh, was named after her.

In 1976, Perkins moved to Jacksonville, Oregon, with her two daughters by Robert Thom, Lillie and Hedy; in 1977, People magazine reported that Perkins “conducts a drama-therapy workshop every Tuesday night in her living room and often speaks to high-school drama groups in the area.” By 1978, Perkins was sufficiently far off the Hollywood radar that the Screen Actors Guild had her on their inactive list and that September, Hollywood column “Ask Dick Kleiner” responded to the query: “What ever happened to Millie Perkins?” with “Millie Perkins died recently”; a letter from Perkins herself resulted in a January 1979 retraction by Kleiner, although the columnist maintained: “almost everyone in Hollywood believes that [Perkins] died.” In 1982, however, it was reported that Perkins was teaching drama at Southern Oregon University.

In 1983, Perkins returned to features to play Jon Voight’s ex-wife in Table for Five. She then played the mother role for the next 20 years, such as Sean Penn’s mother in the fact-based film At Close Range, the mother of Charlie Sheen’s character in the 1987 movie Wall Street, the bereft Jewish mother in the 1996 film The Chamber, and Andy García’s mother in the 2005 film The Lost City.