Mackenzie Phillips says father also owed her money, lied about her goldfish

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Tags : incest, John Phillips, Mackenzie Phillips

Mackenzie Phillips says father also owed her money, lied about her goldfish

Published on March 17, 2010 ⋅ Written by Gordon Flurkey ⋅ Email this article ⋅ Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Mackenzie Phillips: Dad did lots of bad things

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Actress Mackenzie Phillips says her famous musician father damaged her in many other ways besides their scandalous sexual relationship.

Phillips, in a last-ditch effort to garner public sympathy and stimulate sales of her tell-all biography "High On Arrival", told USA Today in an exclusive interview that when she was in gradeschool, her deceased father John Phillips once borrowed her lunch money to buy a pack of cigarettes and never paid her back. The actress said that with inflation factored in, the lunch money her father owed her should amount to about $500 today, but she insists she doesn't care about the money.

"I starved during recess that day. I was the only girl at school who didn't have a Little Debbie Swiss Cake roll," said a tearful Phillips. "How can you be so insensitive as to take your child's lunch money to buy smokes?"

Phillips also added that when she was eight, she had a pet goldfish named Petula that mysteriously disappeared from her bowl one day. Her dad told her the fish left and went to San Francisco to try her hand at competitive wrestling, but she found out years later that Petula had actually died and was flushed down the toilet.

"That really hurt me, for him to lie to me like that," said Phillips. "But I've forgiven him. I've accepted that he wasn't the perfect human being I made him out to be."

When asked why these new bombshell revelations didn't make it to the book, Phillips explained: "As I was writing, I didn't think of the big picture. All I could focus on was the incest, and since then I've learned that you have to dig deeper in order to heal. That put things into perspective for me. Suddenly, it wasn't just all about the incest anymore."

Phillips, best known as Julie Cooper on the sitcom "One Day At A Time," wrote that she and her father developed a sexual relationship after one night of heavy drinking and pill popping in the late 60s. Her life soon began to spiral out of control. During her time on the hit CBS comedy, which ran from 1975 to 1984, she battled drug addiction and underwent drug rehabilitation. She was fired from the show in 1980 because of her drug abuse.

Eventually, she and her father went to rehab together, and she later toured with him in a band called The New Mamas & The Papas.

Phillips has led a troubled life that has included substance abuse and a 2008 arrest at Los Angeles International Airport on suspicion of cocaine and heroin possession. She later pleaded guilty to one count of cocaine possession and was ordered to a drug rehab program.

Phillips' career as an actress took off when, as a teen, she starred as Carol Morrison in the 1973 film "American Graffiti." In the late 1990s, her career experienced a revival when she began co-starring on "So Weird," a Disney Channel program.