Bijou Phillips Hostel 2

She made headlines at 13 when she became the youngest model ever to appear on the cover of Interview Magazine and Italian Vogue. By 14 she’d dropped out of school and emancipated herself from her parents - Mama’s and Papa’s singer John Philips and model mum Genevieve Waite. Over the next few years she modelled, released an album (I’d Rather Eat Glass), and became the darling of the New York tabloid press with her drug taking, wild child antics. She admits her life was ‘out of control’. Her ‘wake up’ call came when she lost a couple of friends to drug overdoses. Her father checked her into rehab, and she began to turn her life around.

By 19 she’d discovered acting. Early roles included James Tobiak’s Black and White and Tart. She showed enormous promise. Today she’s an accomplished actress with 17 films under her belt. In her latest one, Hostel 2, she gets to play one of three American girls studying art in Rome. Everything is fine and dandy until the girls accept a weekend invitation from one of the class models. Will they find the R&R they’re looking for? Or are they about to become pawns in a sick plot for the privileged weirdo’s of the world?

Bijou Philips spoke to Gaynor Flynn via phone about the role and why acting is her number one passion these days.

Gaynor Flynn: I understand you’re in Pittsburgh. What are you doing there?

Bijou Phillips: I’m filming a movie. Bridge to Nowhere by Blair Underwood he’s an actor and this is his first movie.


Gaynor Flynn: Well we’re supposed to be chatting about your other film Hostel 2. What made you say yes to that one?

Bijou Phillips: Well I’d seen the first one and I loved it. It was really gory. I actually couldn’t make it through it and this one was good because it was a lot more psychological. And its three girls and everybody sort of knows about what happens in the first one and you sort of know where they’re headed so the surprise is gone in that sense but what’s great about it is you watch these girls and the entire time you know they’re headed for this dark place. So the happier these girls are and the nicer they are like the more you are freaked out and scared for them.


Gaynor Flynn: Is horror more challenging to make than other films?

Bijou Phillips: Yeah because it was three weeks of like torture stuff when all three girls get down to the dungeon thing. You really have to get yourself there mentally and that was intense. And the kind of internal thoughts you have while you’re going through something like that can sometimes be surprising. Like I use to have problems with my mother when I was a teenager and now we’re super close and during the whole torture stuff I just wanted my mom. But it’s beautiful too. Like those child like needs just pop into your mind and they’re just so simple and it’s sort of like an awakening. And the other hard thing was sometimes you get home and I’d spent a long day shooting and you’ll almost fall asleep and you’ll picture yourself back there and relive some of that torture stuff and you jump out of bed really quickly and that freaks you out and flips your stomach up and you’re out of breath and you kind of get freaked out by that.


Gaynor Flynn: How does it work on set? Do you joke around in between takes? Or do you find it more difficult to slip in and out of character when its horror?

Bijou Phillips: It depends on the subject matter. Usually when you’re shooting you’re having a good time and hanging out. I can’t really go out the night before shooting because I’m so tired. I need like 12 hours of sleep which is all they really give, 12 hours off so I usually just have to go home and go to bed and try and get myself to sleep right away but you know on days off you usually hang out and have a good time, but its funny. If you have to play best friends with someone you find yourself hanging out with that person most of the time and if you’re not supposed to like someone in the movie you find yourself not really hanging out with them that much.


Gaynor Flynn: Is acting your main passion nowadays?

Bijou Phillips: Acting’s pretty much my main passion right now. I’m thinking about making another record, I just have to get into that place. But its hard cause for the last few years I’ve literally just been going from movie, to movie to movie so I haven’t had like any time off to think about that. And acting you just go for it when you can, and when I was trying to do music and acting I found that I wasn’t really doing either as well as I could have been, so I had to make a choice and right now I write music and its nice I have my little studio and record songs. I do it for myself so I get what I need to get out of the music aspect of it like the artistic expression and making music that I love that I can give to my friends or put on my Myspace page but that’s about it I don’t have this huge need to put it out.


Gaynor Flynn: Would you like to make another record at some stage?

Bijou Phillips: Yeah. I think at some point I’ll probably make a little jazz record and maybe go on tour for a minute when I’m older in my 30s or something, but right now while I’m young and have the energy which I barely do I wanna just keep plugging away at the acting.


Gaynor Flynn: Did you study acting or did you just fall into it.

Bijou Phillips: Yeah I studied for years and years. I have an acting coach in Los Angles named Leslie Kahn he’s amazing and I went to this performing arts camp called Stage Door Manner and Natalie Portman went there and Mandy Moore went there and a bunch of people went there.


Gaynor Flynn: You must appreciate people like Justin Timberland and Beyonce then, who juggle two careers?

Bijou Phllips: Yeah, but I feel they’re definitely more musicians than actors. I think Justin Timberlake has done like two movies, and Beyonce has only done like two or three movies.


Gaynor Flynn: Do you have a plan for your acting career?

Bijou Phillips: I don’t know. I mean I’m just having fun doing some horror movies and just kind of exploring all that kind of stuff. I really like comedy and at the same time I really like doing horror films so I don’t know. I get the scripts as they come and I really like them and I just figure out what I went to do, and just do them.


Gaynor Flynn: Almost Famous, is one of the biggest studio films you’ve done so far. Would you like to do more of those?

Bijou Phillips: Actually I think I’d be into doing more studio films more but it’s hard with the studio film you have to really work a lot. They take a really long time to shoot and so I‘d like to do some films like that but you can’t really do as many in a year. The indie films are like in and you have more control and you have more say and you have more ability to make it something you want it to be. With studio films it can be a little bit difficult there’s a lot of people and they all have an opinion and your opinion is at the bottom of the bucket. As an actor you want to be able to believe in what you’re doing and things have to make sense to you and things have to be honest to you. If the scene you’re doing doesn’t make sense and if the scene isn’t honest to you then you tend to be difficult and I find that even on indies. So I don’t’ know. I’ve auditioned for some studio stuff but not really that much. Like right now I’m doing this really small indie film a $1 million and I’m playing a crack whore who turns good and its kind of like a dark, crazy role and I’m having so much fun doing it.


Gaynor Flynn: Is this the one in Pittsburgh?

Bijou Phillips: Yeah so I like doing stuff like that its just a little bit darker, a little bit edgier we can really play and really do what we want and you know I’m really get paid peanuts but I’m having fun doing stuff like that. So I’d like to do more mainstream movies and I think it could work out if you’re both shooting for the same goal, and sometimes I feel like a lot of the studio movies I read I don’t know if I’m necessarily shooting for the same goal. Which is fine like I’m really happy doing the movies that I’m doing I really love them. I play Lorna Doom in The Germs movie which is about the punk band The Germs and it was just a real labour of love but I had so much fun doing it. Then I wrote a bunch of jazz music for this film called Dark Streets which is Gabriel Mann, and Isabelle Miko and myself and its about this jazz club in the 1930’s and kind of everything goes wrong and it’s this dark city and that was really great to do and I got to write a bunch of music for that so I loved making that movie.


Gaynor Flynn: Would you like to write music for films?

Bijou Phillips: Yeah it is something I’d probably like to do more of we’ll see how this jazz movie goes if it goes good and its successful then probably I’ll be able to do more stuff like that. But you just have to fight for the little gems and the little jewels that you get to make that you’re really excited about.


Gaynor Flynn: Did you have to fight for a role in Hostel 2?

Bijou Phillips: Oh yeah it was like hundreds of people turned up. (laughs) I had to work really hard to get it but it was good cause Lauren German and I are really close friends and I was really excited because my character is kind of kooky and crazy and I get to do a lot of slapstick comedy which I don’t get cast in very much so that was fun for me to do. At the same time probably the main reason they hired me is for the horror stuff and the screaming and being able to be afraid and scared and play that. I’m a screamer so people know that I can play that well.


Gaynor Flynn: Given you started out as a model, then musician, do you feel you have to prove yourself as an actress?

Bijou Phillips: I don’t really think of myself as an actress I think of myself as an entertainer and I think most actors do. I mean most actors I know have bands or side projects and even directors I know have bands or paint or write poetry so I think I’m an artist. So its just being creative and finding different outlets that make you feel like that. And I get a lot out of acting. I love thinking about other people and figuring them out and what makes them tick and how they’d do this and what would be funny and what wouldn’t be funny or going to places that most people cant’ go to and getting myself to emotional states that most people couldn’t do in front of a 100 people. It’s a challenge and you’re constantly expressing yourself and you’re constantly thinking and all artists are sort of making a statement on society and a statement on humanity whether it’s in their paintings or their films or their songs.


Gaynor Flynn: Do you have any regrets about starting modelling so young.

Bijou Phillips: No.


Gaynor Flynn: Did you always dream of being a model, like your mum?

Bijou Phillips: No, not at all, it just happened you know I was at a horse show and someone took a picture of me and asked me if I wanted to do a Calvin Klein ad. So I did a Calvin Klein ad and I got a contract and then I did a bunch of them then I quit modelling. Do you miss it at all?


Bijou Phillips: No because I wasn’t really a model I just sort of started doing it. Like literally I didn’t even audition, they saw me at a horse show, hired me I shot the ad, and I did that for like a year or two years and that’s all I ever did in modelling.

Gaynor Flynn: Do people approach you now to model?


Bijou Phillips: Not really. The Calvin Klein ad’s in those days were sort of like weird sort of funky people at work. They weren’t really models and I’m not a model I’m like a weird little girl so I don’t really look like a model.


Gaynor Flynn: In 2002 Hollywood Reporter named you one of the shooting stars of tomorrow, did that put pressure on you at all?

Bijou Phillips: No, I don’t think about all that. I don’t really take any of that stuff seriously. I just sort of try to have fun.