Lily Collins “Forgives” Her Father Phil Collins in an Open Letter
By Kenzie Bryant. Photos: Getty Images.
Lily Collins, actress and British-American daughter of Phil Collins, included an open letter to her father in her new book of personal essays, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me.
“I forgive you for not always being there when I needed and for not being the dad I expected,” she said, according to the Daily Mail. “I forgive the mistakes you made. And although it may seem like it’s too late, it’s not. There’s still so much time to move forward.”
Collins is 27, and she’s a Golden Globe-nominated actress as of this year. Her parents, the Genesis drummer/lead singer and American Jill Tavelman, divorced in 1994, after he allegedly sent a breakup fax (a rumor he’s since refuted). His own memoir, Not Dead Yet, released last year, detailed his affairs, struggle with alcoholism, and a run-in with Princess Diana as she was coming from a colonoscopy.
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Lily Collins has had her own struggles, including an eating disorder, which she first spoke about at Sundance earlier this year. In the book, she contextualizes her anorexia and bulimia to her dad’s split from his third wife, Swiss translator Orianne Cevey in 2008. “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,” she wrote, adding, “Many of my deepest insecurities stem from these issues with my dad.”
She finished off the open letter with a tone of forgiveness, writing, “We all make choices and, although I don’t excuse some of yours, at the end of the day we can’t rewrite the past. I’m learning how to accept your actions and vocalize how they made me feel. I accept and honor the sadness and anger I felt toward the things you did or didn’t do, did or didn’t give me."
This story originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
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