Phil Collins has spoken out about his feud with his daughter Lily Collins, after she wrote a scathing open letter about him in her 2017 memoir, claiming he was absent from her life.
Speaking on Piers Morgan's Uncensored, the Genesis frontman responded to the letter, saying: "She wishes she hadn't written it." He added: "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."
Lily's Memoir Letter
In her memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, Lily, 37, wrote to her dad: "I forgive you for not always being there when I needed and for not being the dad I expected."
The father-daughter duo appeared to have rebuilt their relationship, and when Lily and her film director husband Charlie McDowell, 43, welcomed their daughter through surrogacy last year, she said she had introduced her child to "Grandpa P's music."
Family Reunion
Last year, Phil and his family reunited for four days at a Knightsbridge hotel. Prior to that, Lily had feared her daughter, Tove, might never meet her dad. Phil decided to spend Christmas with all of his children, saying he doesn't know how many Christmases he has left.
"It was moving, that was obvious," he said. "Lily, for example, she 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 Crisis
In April 2024, Phil's children gathered at his bedside, preparing to say goodbye to him when he suffered a health crisis. "There were some decisions to be made about 'Do we keep Phil on life support?' kind of thing," he told The Sunday Times. "My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up. People were coming to say goodbye."
Phil has been open about his struggles with alcoholism, writing in his 2016 memoir, Not Dead Yet, that he became an alcoholic at the age of 55. The star now has a live-in nurse after suffering spine and knee surgeries and can only walk while on crutches, and also has type 2 diabetes.
