Tragic Details About Lily Collins' Life

This article discusses eating disorders and alcohol addiction.

Being a celeb child comes with a lot of perks, including work opportunities that most regular folks can only dream of. However, being Phil Collins' daughter has also come with its fair share of difficulties for Lily Collins. For starters, that meant growing up without a present father. Even before Phil's divorce from Lily's mother was finalized, he packed up his belongings and moved to Switzerland when she was just a little girl. Lily's rocky relationship with her famous dad proved consequential for years to come.

The Genesis drummer and the "Emily In Paris" star have become closer with time, but she had to put in a lot of work to repair their estranged relationship. And as she tried to, she also had to deal with her father's alcohol addiction. On the upside, the experience may have protected her from the all-too-common party lifestyle that often comes with a Hollywood career. "I never did do the whole drinking, drugs," she told Nylon in 2012, according to HuffPost. "That wasn't ever me and is never gonna be me."

But her career choice did play a part in triggering another mental health condition. As she was starting to act and model, Lily developed eating disorders that took her years to recover from. While navigating all that, Lily was also in an emotionally abusive relationship that she struggled to come out from. Therapy helped her with those issues. Lily has faced quite a few obstacles in her short life, but they've taught her valuable lessons. 

When Phil Collins split from Jill Tavelman in 1994, he didn't make much of an effort to stay present for Lily Collins. Then 5 years old, she struggled to make sense of his absence. "[She] hasn't seen her father for two months. She keeps weeping, 'I want my daddy,'" Tavelman told People that August. Instead of calling her, Phil preferred to send the preschooler faxes. "He has to save his voice for the next day," Tavelman said.

The distance took a toll on Lily, who began to walk on eggshells around him. She felt it was her job to make him want to be around her. "Because my dad was often gone, I never wanted to do anything that would make him stay away even longer," she wrote in her 2017 memoir "Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me." The dynamics had long-lasting impacts on the actor. "I've realized that many of my deepest insecurities stem from these issues with my dad," she wrote.

But Lily never lost hope of reconciling with Phil. "There's still so much time to move forward. And I want to. I'm inviting you to join me," she concluded her letter. And they did. Lily has reportedly become closer to her dad amid Phil's declining health. Lily has certainly made her affection for him known to her Instagram fans. "I'm beyond grateful for you today and every day," she captioned a 2024 Father's Day post. 

Lily Collins developed an eating disorder when she was a teenager. She was 16 at the onset of her condition, coinciding with Phil Collins' messy divorce from Orianne Cevey and with the start of her own professional life. "I couldn't handle the pain and confusion surrounding my dad's divorce, and I was having a hard time balancing being a teenager with pursuing two different grown-up careers," Lily wrote in her memoir, highlighting how acting and modeling put a lot of emphasis on how she looked.

Lily struggled with it for years, not only through severely restricting her food intake and exercising obsessively but also by taking diet pills and laxatives. It wasn't until her agent sent the script to the film "To the Bone" about a woman with anorexia in 2016 that she started to seek help. In preparation for the project, she attended group therapy sessions with people recovering from eating disorders. "It encouraged me to really dig deep and tell the truth, to be more brave. And it was freeing," she told The Guardian.

Lily also started therapy, which proved crucial in unveiling the root causes of her condition. "I feel like I am getting to the root of why I allowed those darker thoughts to dictate how I lived my life, what I did or didn't eat, and the restrictions I put on myself," she said on the "Make It Reign" podcast in 2021.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, or know someone who is, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

In her memoir, Lily Collins revealed she was in a toxic relationship in her early 20s that continued to cause emotional damage long after it ended. "I found myself in a romantic relationship filled with deceit, infatuation, codependency, and some pretty dark s**t," she wrote, never naming the person. The everyday micro- (and sometimes not-so-micro) aggressions destroyed her self-esteem. "I became so scared that if I left him, I would have nothing. Be nothing," she penned.

The abuse was mainly verbal, with her then-boyfriend criticizing Lily's looks, choice of clothes, and other expressions of her personality. "He'd use awful words about me in terms of what I was wearing and would call me a whore and all these things," she said on the "We Can Do Hard Things" podcast in 2023. To protect herself, she became the dullest version of herself. "I became quite silent and comfortable in silence and feeling like I had to make myself small to feel super safe," she said. But it did once become physical. 

In her book, Lily described how her now-ex once closed his hands around her neck. The relationship had major impacts on her mental and physical health, leading to anxiety attacks and other manifestations. "My skin was breaking out, and I was having these panic attacks, and I had kidney infections," she said. Thanks to therapy and the support of loved ones, Lily was able to leave the relationship for good. 

As Lily Collins was working on forgiving her father for his absence, Phil Collins fell so deep into alcohol addiction that she feared she would never have a chance to repair their relationship. "I was constantly afraid something would happen to my dad ... I was convinced that one day I would wake up to a phone call from halfway across the world saying that it had finally gone too far," she wrote in "Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me."

Lily tried to do her part, but talking seemed to have no effect on Phil. "No matter what I said or how much I expressed my concerns to him, the drinking continued," she penned. Phil turned to alcohol during one of the darkest periods of his life. The late 2010s were marked by his difficult divorce and a spinal injury that required surgery and prevented him from playing the drums. "Night after night I find myself lying on the bed, staring out of a skylight at grey Swiss skies, rueing my life," he wrote in his 2016 memoir, "Not Dead Yet."

He turned to alcohol to deal with it all. Thankfully, Phil was able to get his addiction under control around 2013. But what she witnessed during those years left a deep mark on Lily. "His battle with alcoholism, and my fear that he wouldn't survive, forever altered my own relationship with drinking," she wrote in her memoir. 

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Lily Collins is proud of how far she's come in her career, but she has often struggled with intruding thoughts of imposter syndrome. "There were moments growing up and within the recent past that I felt like I almost didn't deserve my crown," she said on the "Make It Reign" podcast. The more she worked and received recognition for what she put out there, the more confident she felt. But it didn't completely go away. "I still have this imposter syndrome,'" she said.

When those thoughts invade her head, Lily reminds herself of what she has accomplished and how much effort she put into it all. "I didn't work hard to get a crown — that wasn't my goal," she explained. Her main objective from the beginning was to come into her own and to share her vision with the world. "I wanted to feel like I gained a voice, and with that voice I've come to realize that I can deserve my crown more and more," she said.

To achieve that, Lily opted to stay away from music and singing, even though she considers herself a pretty good singer. She didn't want to live in Phil Collins' shadow and be eternally compared to him. She wanted to march to the beat of her own drum, not her father's. "Since I wanted to make my own way, far from my father's genius, I preferred to be an actress," she told Vogue France in 2022.