Holly Michelle Phillips (née Gilliam; born June 4, 1944) is an American former singer, songwriter, and actress. Described by Time magazine as the "purest soprano in pop music", she rose to fame in the mid-1960s with the folk rock vocal group the Mamas & the Papas. After their disbandment, she started a successful acting career in film and television in the 1970s.
A native of Long Beach, California, she spent her early life in Los Angeles and Mexico City, raised by her widowed father. While working as a model in San Francisco, she met and married John Phillips in 1962 and went on to co-found the Mamas & the Papas in 1965. The band rose to fame with their popular singles "California Dreamin' " and "Creeque Alley", both of which she co-wrote. They released five studio albums before their dissolution in 1970. While married to John Phillips, she gave birth to their daughter, singer Chynna Phillips. Michelle Phillips is the last surviving original member of the band.
After the breakup of the Mamas & the Papas and her divorce from John Phillips, she transitioned into acting, appearing in a supporting part in The Last Movie (1971) before being cast as Billie Frechette in the critically acclaimed crime biopic Dillinger (1973), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. In 1974, she had lead roles in two television films: the crime feature The Death Squad, and the teen drama The California Kid, in the latter of which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. She went on to appear in a number of films throughout the remainder of the 1970s, including Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), playing Natacha Rambova, and the thriller Bloodline (1979). She released her only solo album, Victim of Romance, in 1977.
Phillips's first film of the 1980s was the comedy The Man with Bogart's Face (1980). The next year she co-starred with Tom Skerritt in the nature-themed horror Savage Harvest (1981), followed by the television films Secrets of a Married Man (1984) and The Covenant (1985). In 1987, she joined the series Knots Landing, portraying Anne Matheson, the mother of Paige Matheson (portrayed by Nicollette Sheridan), until the series's 1993 conclusion.
Phillips later had supporting roles in the comedy film Let It Ride (1989) and the psychological thriller Scissors (1991). In 1998, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Mamas & the Papas. Phillips appeared in independent films in the 2000s, with supporting parts in Jane White Is Sick and Twisted (2002) and Kids in America (2005) and had recurring guest roles in the television series That's Life (2001–2002) and 7th Heaven (2001–2004).
Phillips was born Holly Michelle Gilliam on June 4, 1944, in Long Beach, California, the second child of Joyce Leone (née Poole), a Canadian-born accountant, and Gardner Burnett Gilliam, a merchant mariner from San Diego. She had one older sister, Russell Ann. Phillips's paternal grandfather, Marcus Gilliam, was from Walla Walla, Washington, and worked as a miner and hotelier in Erie, British Columbia. Gilliam County, Oregon, takes its name from her paternal ancestors. Her mother suffered heart problems stemming from a childhood bout with rheumatic fever, including subacute endocarditis, and died of a related Intracerebral hemorrhage when Phillips was five years old. Reflecting on her mother's illness, Phillips said: "They knew it was only a matter of time ... She would lie on the couch in the evenings, listening as my father read to her. One night, after my sister and I had been put to bed, my mother just raised her head, fell unconscious on the couch, and that was it."
Following his wife's death, Phillips's father, wanting a change of scenery, relocated the family to Buffalo, New York, where they lived for nine months while he worked as a bartender. They subsequently returned to California, settling in Pasadena. In June 1951, two days after Phillips's seventh birthday, the family relocated again to Mexico City, where her father had enrolled to study sociology on the GI Bill at Mexico City College. Phillips spent the following six years in Mexico, where she attended public schools and became fluent in Spanish. Throughout her childhood, Spanish remained Phillips's primary written language, though she later learned to write in English. She resided with her father and sister in the Roma Sur district of Cuauhtémoc. Phillips recalled that her and her sister's experiences living in a different culture "helped us get over my mother's death, and instead of grieving, we became very strong, independent, and free".
At the age of 13, Phillips returned to the United States with her father and sister, settling again in Los Angeles. There, she became a childhood friend of Sue Lyon. Phillips attended several high schools in Los Angeles, including Alexander Hamilton High School and Marshall High School. While a student, Phillips played several sports and studied piano, guitar, and cello. During her sophomore year, after being caught skipping classes and subsequently forging absence permission slips, Phillips was expelled from Marshall High School and transferred to Eagle Rock High School.
In mid-1961, at age 17, Phillips relocated to San Francisco to live with her friend Tamar Hodel and began working as a model. She appeared on a billboard advertising Lucky Lager beer and in print ads for Cole bathing suits. Phillips quickly became immersed in San Francisco's countercultural music scene and nightlife, recalling: "Tamar and I loved going out and showing off. We had a friend, Eddie, Tamar's hairdresser, who was a flaming homosexual and proud of it. Remember that this was early for gays to be obvious. Eddie was the first I knew and loved who was blatant. He loved to do our hair and make my face up and dress me ... We didn't always have a lot of money, but I only once went to bed hungry." At a club in San Francisco in July 1961, she met John Phillips while he was touring California with his band the Journeymen, and the two began a whirlwind romance. He divorced his first wife and married Michelle on December 31, 1962, when she was 18 years old.
1965–1969: The Mamas and the Papas
The Phillips newlyweds relocated to New York City, where they began writing songs together and formed the Mamas and the Papas in 1965. Michelle co-wrote some of the band's hits, including "California Dreamin'", which appears on the group's debut album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966).
Recording of the Mamas and the Papas' second album, titled The Mamas and the Papas (1966) was interrupted when Michelle Phillips' affair with Gene Clark of the Byrds was revealed. An affair the previous year between Phillips and bandmate Denny Doherty had been forgiven; Doherty and John Phillips had reconciled and ostensibly written "I Saw Her Again" (1966) about the episode, although they later disagreed about how much Doherty had contributed to the song. This time, John Phillips was determined to fire his wife. After consulting their attorney and record label, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, and Denny Doherty served Michelle Phillips with a letter expelling her from the group on June 4, 1966. However, she was rehired on August 23 after the remaining band members concluded that her replacement, Jill Gibson, lacked her predecessor's "stage charisma and grittier edge". After Phillips's reinstatement, the band embarked on a brief tour of the East Coast, playing a series of shows in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and at Fordham University in New York City.
After returning to California and settling in Los Angeles, the group recorded their third album, The Mamas & The Papas Deliver (1967). In June 1967, Phillips performed with the group at the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California, an event organized by John Phillips and Lou Adler. The festival also featured other prominent California-based counterculture musicians and psychedelic rock acts, including Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin) and Jimi Hendrix. Recounting the experience, Phillips said: "[It was like] a Renaissance Fair. It was convenient for the artists and the audience. Practically everyone had a seat, and if not, people were lining up against the fence, and they could see and hear. Or people were sitting outside, you could hear it outside, too ... It was lovely."