- The Observer, Sunday October 29 2000
Bijou Phillips is something of a force of nature. Here, for instance, is her account of how she started her career in the music industry: 'I just kind of got fed up with modelling and living in New York and being fucking bored out of my mind, so I came out to Los Angeles and got a record deal.' Just like that?
Probably. Bijou Phillips has made one album, been in four movies (with more to come), retired from a successful modelling career ('It was bullshit. I don't have one good thing to say about modelling.') and has been on the cover of Playboy . She is 20 years old. Mind you, it is all in the genes. Her father is John Phillips, from the Mamas And Papas, although his days of glory were long gone by the time Bijou was born. One of her half-sisters is Mackenzie Phillips, a teenage sitcom star of the Seventies who became every American tabloids favourite burn-out for a while. Another half-sister is Chynna Phillips, who was in the fleeting daughters-of-the-famous pop group Wilson Phillips, and is now married to William Baldwin. You can take it that fame holds no mysteries for young Bijou.
The first film we'll see her in is James Toback's uneven but fascinating Black And White, among a sprawling cast that includes Robert Downey Jr, Claudia Schiffer, Mike Tyson and Ben Stiller. Bijou plays the high-school age daughter of wealthy Manhattannites who spends her time hanging out - and having threesomes in Central Park - with roughneck aspiring rappers.
It turns out that Bijou herself had wild patches during her adolescence, becoming a notorious figure on the New York club scene at 14. She claims now that it was a brief phase she was passing through, and that she was over all that after a few months. Still, the casting in Black And White makes sense to her. 'I'm not an actress, I'm just being me.' She also has a smaller part as a teenage groupie in Cameron Crowe's excellent, if nostalgia-drenched, coming-of-age-as-a-rock-journalist film, Almost Famous.
In real life, though, she only hangs around musicians because she is one. Her debut album, I'd Rather Eat Glass, was released last year. Her father taught her how to play guitar and she took all her influences from her dad's record collection. 'I never really cared for modern music,' she says. There are clearly a lot of things Phillips has no time for. So catch her now in what could be an interesting acting career before she moves on to the next five things she has to do before 25.
Five things you should know about Bijou Phillips
1. She owns a Pekinese
2. Her father is John Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas
3. She was legally emancipated from her parents at age 14
4. Michael Stipe is a friend and has photographed her professionally
5. She was in a controversial series of Calvin Klein ads at 16
