Model and actress Bijou Phillips has revealed she could be gone in a matter of days if she doesn’t soon receive the kidney transplant she so desperately needs.
“I’ve needed a transplant for a year. I’m sort of hanging on by a thread,” Phillips told Us Weekly in a candid interview for the magazine’s latest issue.
The 45-year-old, who was born with underdeveloped kidneys and spent the first three months of her life in the NICU, is currently hospitalized at UCLA, where she’s been undergoing dialysis since earlier this month.
Phillips previously had a kidney transplant in 2017, but subsequent complications — including an infection called the BK virus — eventually resulted in both cellular and antibody rejection.
“The medication you take when you’re transplanted is very toxic to the kidneys,” Phillips explained. “So when you get a transplant — heart or liver or kidney — within a decade, you’re probably going to need a kidney transplant.”
She added that she could “make it on dialysis for a couple years” — or get another infection and “be gone in a few days.”
Phillips noted that her father, the Mamas & the Papas co-founder John Phillips, got an infection while on dialysis following a liver transplant and “was dead within three days because his immune system was so weak.”
She said she remains “really hopeful” but is facing “an extremely urgent situation.”
Phillips in recent weeks has appealed to her fans and followers on social media for help in finding a new kidney. Sources close to the actress have previously said that no one close to her was a viable match.
Phillips told Us Weekly there’d been the possibility of getting a kidney from her brother, Aron, but doctors ultimately turned him down. She said there’s the hope of getting him into some sort of organ exchange group, which could then move her higher on the list when doctors do find a match.
In the meantime, the “Almost Famous” actress said she would continue to fight every day for her daughter, 11-year-old Finna Francis, whom she shares with her ex-husband, Danny Masterson.
In October 2011, Phillips tied the knot with Masterson, the Scientologist and former actor best known for his role on “That ’70s Show.” Phillips filed for divorce after Masterson was sentenced in September 2023 to 30 years to life in prison for rape.
