Bijou Phillips

At 44 years old, Bijou Phillips has this physical status:

Bijou Lilly Phillips (born April 1, 1980) is an American actress, model, socialite, and singer.

The daughter of musician John Phillips and Geneviève Waïte, she began her career as a model, and at 13, became one of the youngest people to ever appear on the cover of Italian Vogue.

Phillips made her singing debut with I'd Rather Eat Glass (1999), and since her first major film appearance in Black and White (1999), she has acted in Almost Famous (2000), Bully (2001), The Door in the Floor (2004), Hostel: Part II (2007), and Choke (2008).

From 2010 to 2013, she played the recurring role of Lucy Carlyle on the television series Raising Hope.

Early life

Phillips was born on April 1, 1980, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is the daughter of John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, Geneviève Waïte, a South African model, artist, and actress. She was named for the song "My Petite Bijou" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross (bijou means 'jewel' in French). She is the youngest of Phillips's children; she has one brother, Tamerlane, and three half-siblings (Mackenzie, Jeffrey, and Chynna). After her parents split up, both were found unfit to have custody of Bijou and she was placed in foster care with a family in Bolton Landing, New York. She lived there on and off, making extended visits with her parents, who had both acquired houses in the area. Her father won custody when she was in third grade, and she moved with him to Lloyd Harbor, a village of the Town of Huntington, Long Island.

According to Waïte, when Phillips was 13 years old, her half-sister Mackenzie informed Bijou of her (Mackenzie's) ten-year incestuous relationship with their father, and the information had a devastating effect on Bijou's teenage years, stripping her of her innocence and leaving her "wary of [her] father."

At 14, Phillips quit school and moved into her own apartment with a housekeeper, just off Fifth Avenue. Once described by The Observer as a "wild child", she experienced a rebellious childhood in New York City, where she used to party, drink and take drugs, such as cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin. On this period of her life, she remarked: "If you were 14 years old and able to live on your own in an apartment in New York City, and you got invited to all these clubs, and you got a bank account and you had a car service you could call so that you could go wherever you wanted ... What would happen?". At 15, she reportedly lost her virginity to singer Evan Dando. Growing up, she became somewhat of a local tabloids' fixture due to her late-night persona and association with other socialites like sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton. At 17, following the death of her friend, the 20-year-old Manhattan socialite Davide Sorrenti, due to a heroin overdose, her father sent her into rehab.

Personal life

Phillips dated Sean Lennon at some point in the mid-2000s and she became the muse and subject matter of his 2006 album Friendly Fire.

In 2004, Phillips began dating Danny Masterson; the couple met at a poker tournament in Las Vegas. They are both Scientologists. The couple announced their engagement in March 2009. They were married on October 18, 2011, in a private castle in Ireland. On February 14, 2014, Phillips gave birth to their daughter.

Phillips has starred with Masterson in several films and in a 2011 episode of Fox's Raising Hope.

On February 17, 2017, Masterson revealed that Phillips had been suffering from kidney disease for five years. She was born with small kidneys and had been battling the disease by living a stress-free life, eating a vegan diet, and getting dialysis. She suffered from a blood infection and was in need of a transplant. On April 7, 2017, she received a kidney transplant.

In November 2017, actor Daniel Franzese alleged that Phillips had "ridiculed" him about his sexuality and weight and physically assaulted him on the set of Bully. Phillips subsequently apologized for her behavior. The same month, actress Heather Matarazzo claimed that Phillips had held her against a wall and choked her shortly before filming for Hostel: Part II began.

Phillips has defended both her father and her husband (the former accused of rape and incest by Phillips's half-sister Mackenzie; the latter accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women) in the face of allegations of sexual abuse.

Of Mackenzie's allegations against their father, Phillips said, "I'm 29 now, I've talked to everyone who was around during that time, I've asked the hard questions. I do not believe my sister. Our father [was] many things. This is not one of them." In contrast, Phillips also stated that Mackenzie told her about their incestuous relationship, and that the news was "confusing and scary" and that she was "heartbroken" to think that her family left her alone with her father. In a 2000 interview with Bruce LaBruce she discussed a song she had written about her father with the refrain, "He touched me wrong," but didn't go into detail about whether the lyrics referred to herself or someone else.

Between 2017 and 2020, Phillips's husband Danny Masterson was accused of rape, harassment and stalking of several women (including Chrissie Carnell-Bixler, the wife of musician Cedric Bixler-Zavala). Masterson has not responded directly to any of the allegations, but on Instagram, Phillips mocked Carnell-Bixler's police report detailing Masterson's alleged rape.

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Career

Phillips was on the front page of Interview magazine when she was 13. Vogue Italia's cover girl appeared just after. Phillips later became a Calvin Klein image model and appeared in numerous commercial campaigns in which youth were seen sporting white underwear. The drives had been widely condemned as pedophilic. In a conversation, she expressed her dissatisfaction with modeling, and she said, "I wanted to go swimming in the sea but I was jumping up and down in a puddle."

Phillips began working on her debut album I'd Rather Eat Glass, which was produced by Jerry Harrison, after signing a record deal at age 17. Almo Sounds' May 11, 1999, it was the first full-length music release to date. The album's name refers to her work as a fashion model, saying she'd rather "eat glass" than return to modeling. When writing songs for the album, Phillips collaborated with a variety of writers, including Eric Bazilian, Greg Wells, Dave Bassett, Howard Jones, and Jill Cunniff. I'd Rather Eat Glass received mixed feedback from music critics, most attacking the work for being immature, but her musical style has been positively compared to Letters to Cleo's Natalie Imbruglia or Kay Hanley.

Phillips made her film debut in a small role in the 1999 film Sugar Town. In James Toback's drama Black and White, opposite Robert Downey Jr., Jared Leto, Brooke Shields, and Elijah Wood, her first big film role came the same year as an Upper East Side girl struggling to fit in with the black hip-hop crowd. The film received mixed reviews and found a small audience in theaters, but AllMovie commented: "The film] starts off strong with a provocative role by rookie Bijou Phillips as the most unapologetic seeker of approval from her hip-hop-loving friends." Phillips fades into the background, and Toback's insistence on grafting a standard crime-drama plot hampers the film.

In Cameron Crowe's semi-biographical musical drama Almost Famous (2000), Phillips appeared alongside Kate Hudson. The film was a huge success, and it was nominated for four Academy Awards. Phillips appeared in two independent coming-of-age films in 2001. She played the longtime friend of a young woman at a preparatory school in 1980s New York City, opposite Dominique Swain and Melanie Griffith. Phillips is one of the film's most interesting characters, according to PopMatters, "thanks to yet another fearless performance." Bully, based on Bobby Kent's 1993 murder, played one of many young adults in South Florida who enact a murder plot against a mutual friend who has emotionally, physically, and sexually assaulted them for years. The film received mixed critical feedback, but respected critic Roger Ebert was one of the film's most popular fans, earning it four out of four actors. The actress' role in the film prompted The Hollywood Reporter to name her one of the 2002 "Shooting Stars of Tomorrow" actresses.

Phillips appeared in the thriller Octane, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2003. He played a member of a strange cult of young criminals, alongside Mischa Barton. In The Door in the Floor (2004), a drama with heavy sexual themes based on John Irving's book A Widow for One Year, she played the nanny of an author's teenage daughter. Phillips appeared nude in some of its scenes alongside Anne Hathaway in the drama Havoc (2005) as a spoiled socialite. The "support cast," including Bijou Phillips as the "trashy best friend," is praised by Variety, although Variety claims: "The engagement between [their characters] is both girlish and true, complete with tantalizing, lesbian-flavored scenes" is "as displayed." Due to the unfavorable critical reception, tumultuous rehearsal actors were not allowed in theaters in the United States. In the slasher film Venom (also 2005), directed by Kevin Williamson, she appeared as an ill-fated high school senior.

Philipps appeared in The Wizard of Gore, the mother of a magic magazine's publisher, in three films, the first being the comedy drama Spin, about seven people at a famous Los Angeles nightclub. Phillips appeared in Hostel: Part II, which was a sequel to Hostel (2005), as one of three American female art students in Rome's Slovak village, where they are escorted and led to a wealthy client center in which wealthy clients are taken to torture and murder. She claimed that her torture sequence, which involves her being scalped by a power saw, needed around forty-five setups. In a 2007 interview, she said, "I don't think I could do something like this again." "I'm glad that I had the opportunity, and I love my work," says the author, "we went into places that I didn't know existed" and I don't have to do it again." Hostel: Part II was banned from theatrical appearance in several countries, but parts of it were not introduced theatrically in the United States, owing to poor box office returns.

Phillips appeared in the biographical film What We Do Is Secret as Lorna Doom, the Germs' bassist and a close friend of singer Darby Crash. Phillips was 17 years old when she first started directing, and she maintained the project for the entire time it took to bring the film to life, which was almost a decade. She earned critical acclaim for her role as she appeared on "Striking" and said that her role "lights up in a unique way whether she's in Crash's company or simply talking about him." Phillips appeared in the documentary Chelsea on the Rocks, directed by Abel Ferrara, and starred as a milkmaid opposite Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston in the well-received black comedy Choke, based on Chuck Palahniuk's book of the same name. Phillips played a love interest and an alluring celebrity singer of a club in 1930s New York City in Dark Streets (her last 2008 film).

Phillips appeared in four independent feature films in 2009, three of which were opposite Danny Masterson. Wake, her first release in the year, was a romantic comedy in which she played an emotionally lonely, young woman who attends a funeral for his fiancée. Phillips appeared in It's Alive, a revival of Larry Cohen's 1974 film "It's Alive" as a mother with a murderous baby. "Bijou Philips is unquestionably the star here, leaping into her role in what is unquestionably just a piece of schlock cinema with soaring enthusiasm," Dread Central's review for the film said. Phillips will reunite with Lauren German and also portray a woman whose husband finds that the only way to morally correct his cheating is for his wife to cheat on him. The Bridge to Nowhere, her last film in 2009, was the crime drama starring a sex worker.

Phillips appeared in FOX's sitcom Raising Hope (2010–2014), as the title character's biological mother and a serial murderer sentenced to death. She appeared in a total of seven episodes of the series before its finale. She appeared in episodes of "Sweetest Kill" on television in 2010 and 2012, and in 2011 she appeared in the Broken Social Scene's "Sweetest Kill" video. Since her last appearance in Raising Hope, Phillips hasn't responded, deciding to rely on her family and health.

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