Phil Collins has addressed his family feud with his Hollywood daughter Lily Collins after she blasted him in her 2017 memoir for not being the dad she "expected." The Genesis star, 75, spoke out following his end-of-life scare in 2024, when his children rushed to his bedside.
In her memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, Lily, 37, wrote an open letter to her dad, telling him: "I forgive you for not always being there when I needed and for not being the dad I expected."
Phil's admission about Lily's mum
In a new interview on Piers Morgan's Uncensored, Phil responded to Lily's letter, confessing: "She wishes she hadn't written it because she thought it was hurtful. I'm not saying it isn't hurtful. I know what I did or what I shouldn't have done. I treated her mum badly. I tried to always be there for her."
He added: "Whenever, from the age of five or six, whenever I left the house to go off, I've always tried to be there for her."
Family reunion and emotional moments
Last year, the family reunited for four days at a Knightsbridge hotel. Until then, Lily feared her daughter Tove, born via surrogacy last year with husband Charlie McDowell, 43, would never meet her dad, whom she now fondly calls "Grandpa P."
Phil made the decision to spend Christmas with all of his children because he didn't know how many Christmases he had left. Reflecting on the celebration, he recalled: "It was moving, that was obvious. Lily, for example, just burst into tears because she now has a child, and she said, 'I never thought that my child would get to know her grandfather'... It was very touching, very moving."
Health struggles and past confessions
In April 2024, Phil's children were called to his bedside after he suffered a health crisis. He previously told the Sunday Times: "There were some decisions to be made about 'Do we keep Phil on life support?' kind of thing. My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up. People were coming to say goodbye. But I don't remember them coming, I didn't have no idea this was going on."
Phil has also been open about his alcoholism, writing in his 2016 memoir, Not Dead Yet, that he became an alcoholic at 55: "I got through the heady Sixties, the trippy Seventies, the imperial Eighties, the busy Nineties. I was retired, content - then I fell. Because suddenly, I had too much time on my hands."
The star now has a live-in nurse after undergoing spine and knee surgeries, and can only walk with crutches. He also has type two diabetes.
