Michelle Phillips (born June 4, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She gained fame as a member of the 1960s group The Mamas & the Papas, and is the last surviving original member of the group.
Biography
Early life
Phillips was born Holly Michelle Gilliam in Long Beach, California, the daughter of Joyce Leon (née Poole), an accountant, and Gardner Burnett Gilliam, a merchant mariner.[1] She grew up partly in Mexico City, where her father was attending college on the GI Bill. She married John Phillips on December 31, 1962, when she was 18, before the formation of the band. In 1968, she gave birth to their daughter, Chynna Phillips. The couple divorced in 1970.
Musical career
Phillips co-wrote some of the band's hits, including "Creeque Alley" and "California Dreamin'". During 1970, Phillips sang backup vocals on a Leonard Cohen tour. That year, Phillips married actor Dennis Hopper. The marriage lasted eight days. Of that marriage, Phillips said: "I will say this about Dennis Hopper: We were married for eight days and truly...they were the happiest days of my life."[citation needed]
In 1973, Phillips recorded vocals as a cheerleader along with Darlene Love, for the Cheech & Chong single "Basketball Jones" which peaked at No.15 on the Billboard singles chart. In 1975 Phillips signed a solo recording contract with A&M Records and released a promo single, "Aloha Louie", that she wrote with ex-husband John Phillips. Phillips released her first solo single in 1976, "No Love Today", on the Mother, Jugs & Speed movie soundtrack. On August 24, 1976, Phillips sang "No Love Today" on The Mike Douglas Show. In 1977, Phillips released her debut solo album, Victim of Romance, produced by Jack Nitzsche for A&M Records. Her first two solo singles from the album failed to make the U.S. music charts. That year she sang backup vocals with former stepdaughter actress Mackenzie Phillips on "Zulu Warrior", for her ex-husband's second solo album, Pay Pack & Follow, which was released in 2001. "Zulu Warrior" is in the September 2008 release, Pussycat, which has the 1977 mix of the song.
In 1979, she recorded the song "Forever" for the movie soundtrack of California Dreaming, a surf film that had nothing to do with her old band. In late 1987, Phillips sang backup vocals on Belinda Carlisle's number one hit, "Heaven Is a Place on Earth", as well as on the Carlisle LP, Heaven on Earth.
On January 12, 1998, Phillips was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York City, with her bandmates. For the first time in over two decades Michelle performed California Dreamin live with Denny Doherty and John Phillips. Phillips was later inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2000 (for the Mamas & Papas) where she performed live with Denny Doherty, without John.
On March 29, 2001, Phillips was among the performers at The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood, California, for a John Phillips memorial tribute. Michelle performed live with Scott McKenzie and Denny Doherty on two numbers. Non-performers who also attended included Lou Adler, The Mamas & the Papas' original record producer, among the three hundred other invited guests.
Acting career
Phillips began acting in the 1970s and continues to act in movies and in television. She was introduced in 1973's Dillinger as John Dillinger's girlfriend, Billie Frechette. In 1974 she was featured in The California Kid with Martin Sheen. In 1977, she played Rudolph Valentino's second wife Natacha Rambova in Ken Russell's film Valentino. Phillips also played the mermaid princess Nyah on Fantasy Island.
She has made guest appearances on programs such as Spin City and Star Trek: The Next Generation (where she appeared in the episode "We'll Always Have Paris" as a former love-interest of Captain Picard). She had a guest role on the television series The Magnificent Seven, where she played the character of Maude Standish, the mother of one of the Seven. Phillips' most recent serious acting job has been a recurring role on the WB drama 7th Heaven as Lily Jackson, sister of family matriarch Annie Jackson Camden (Catherine Hicks). She played Laura Collins in the 1996 television movie No One Would Tell.
Phillips starred for several seasons on Knots Landing as Anne W. Matheson Sumner, playing the mother of future Desperate Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan (a role which Phillips returned to for the 1997 TV movie Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac). In the mid-1990s she played Abby Malone, mother of Valerie (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen) on Fox's Beverly Hills, 90210.
She appeared at the TV Land awards in April of 2009 for the 30th year celebration of Knots Landing.
Personal life
She has been married to
Phillips married Dennis Hopper on October 31, 1970. She married radio executive Robert Burch in 1978, and divorced in 1980. Phillips gave birth to her second child, a boy named Austin Hines, in 1982.
In 1986, she wrote an autobiography, California Dreamin': The True Story of the Mamas and the Papas, released just weeks after her former husband John Phillips' autobiography Papa John. In it Phillips describes such events as the first meeting between her and fellow Mama, Cass Elliot, winning 17 straight shoots at a crap table in the Bahamas when the band was broke and could not afford plane fare back to the States, and how her writing credit on "California Dreamin'", which still nets her royalties, was "the best wake-up call" she ever had (she was asleep in a New York Hotel room when her then husband John Phillips woke her up to help him finish a new song he was writing).
She is mother of singer Chynna Phillips, Austin Hines and Aron Wilson and ex-stepmother of actress Mackenzie Phillips.
Phillips is renowned for her youthful appearance which she attributes, in part, to staying completely away from direct sunlight.[citation needed]. She sang at Doherty's funeral in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
She was friends with Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Wojciech Frykowski, who were murdered by Charles Manson's cult on August 9, 1969. In a 2006 interview for the History Channel show Our Generation: Death of the Counterculture, she said that it was still hard to talk about the murders.
References
External links
