Phil Collins Says Lily Collins Feared For His Life Amid Alcoholism

Paige Catton Sun, October 4, 2026 at 2:03 AM UTC

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Originally appeared on E! Online

Phil Collins is sharing how his near-death experience impacted his kids.

Over two years after he nearly died due to his struggles with alcoholism, the former Genesis frontman detailed his daughter Lily Collins’ emotional reaction to his health battle when the entire family got together last Christmas.

“It was wonderful to hear their stories of how they feared they wouldn’t see me again,” Phil shared of his kids during an Oct. 2 appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “And Lily, for example, she just burst into tears because she now has a child.”

“She said, ‘I never thought that my child would get to know her grandfather,’” he continued of Lily, who shares daughter Tove, 20 months, with husband Charlie McDowell. “It was very touching, very moving.”

At the time, the Emily in Paris actress—who Phil shares with ex Jill Tavelman—and several of her siblings got together to celebrate all Phil had overcome, staying at a London hotel for four days.

As the “You’ll Be in My Heart” singer emphasized, “It was a monumental thing.”

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Indeed, the special celebration came a little over a year after an extremely difficult time for the family.

In late 2023, Phil was admitted to a Swiss hospital due to health issues related to his years of heavy alcohol use. At one point during his seven-month stay, the “In the Air Tonight” artist was put on life support, with his manager calling in his children—including Lily, 37, and her siblings Joely Collins, 54, Simon Collins, 50, Nicholas Collins, 25, and Matthew Collins, 21—to come to Switzerland to be at their dad’s side.

"Because there were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing," Phil told The Sunday Times in an August interview. "My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up. People were coming to say goodbye."

Todd Williamson/Getty Images For Relativity Media

Looking back, the 75-year-old—who previously shared he suffered kidney damage from his past alcohol use—expressed that he was “very lucky to have come out of that.”

“Needless to say,” he added, “I haven’t had a drink since.”

For more stars who have opened up about their sobriety journeys, keep reading…

Lamar Odom

After the two-time NBA champ was arrested and charged with a DUI in January 2026, he became informed on how to fight against his addictions.“If you do your education, addiction [is where] you suffer from a brain disease, just like cancer or any other disease," hesaid during an appearance onPage SixRadiothat April."I don't think anyone would wish to have cancer.”Lamar added, “So, me being educated on disease, the more and more I get educated, the more and more it's easier for me to stay sober.”The basketball star—who survived a near-fatal drug overdose in 2015—hadpreviously detailed the inspiration he hopes to be to others after passing 60 days of being "completely sober."“I have a certain type of mental and physical endurance, but when it comes to getting high and escaping, I'm just like everyone else,”he toldUSA Todayin March 2026. “If I could just help the average person and give them faith and hope that they can overcome it, then that's probably one of the reasons why the Lord spared me.”Jason Biggs

In October 2018, theAmerican Piestar announced he was one year sober in a celebratory and encouragingInstagrampost.“I first tried to get sober over 5 years ago, when the weight of my obsession with booze and drugs became too heavy for me to handle,” he wroteat the time. “Turns out this s--t is hard.”He continued, “After some fits and starts, I’ve managed to put together one year of sobriety. I’m as proud of it as anything in my life. If you’re struggling, know there’s help. Don’t be ashamed. We can do this.”Years later, hereflected on his journey with addiction and the lengths he went to hide the hisstruggle.“I’m going to therapy and ‘working on things’ but meanwhile I’m leaving therapy, having just had a good session, and I’m going to the liquor store and buying a fifth of vodka, drinking it and then driving home,” he said on a March 2024 episode of his wifeJenny Mollen'sAll the Failspodcast. “I knew how to get wasted enough to where I took myself out of the life equation, took myself out of the present, didn’t have to connect in a way that made me feel things.”He added, “I had it figured out to a T. To not get too drunk where I couldn’t have a conversation with you. I was replacing those bottles in the bar all the time.”Ashlyn Harris

The two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champ has been open about hermisuse of Adderallwhile battling injuries during her college soccer career.“I was getting really heavily addicted to Adderall and misusing it,” she said on a 2025 episode of theQuestion Everything with Danielle Robaypodcast. “I was taking it all the time. I would go days without sleeping. It was wild. I felt like I was gonna give myself a heart attack. I was crushing it. I was snorting it. It was so problematic.”However, in the midst of her struggle, her college coachAnson Dorrancewas there to support her.“It got really, really dark and I had to make some serious adjustments,” she explained, “and Anson would have me read books. I started reading this book called [Man’s Search]for Meaningand it's about suffering and reframing it and it changed my life.”Offset

In October 2025, theMigosmember shared he wasfour years sober from codeine—an opioid used to make the soda-based drink sizzurp—after a "wake-up call" from his teenage sonJordan."My oldest son kept asking for like pineapple Fanta, but he don't even really drink soda," Offset recounted onBaby, This Is Keke Palmer. "And then one day he came in studio like, ‘Why yours is different color than mine?’ It killed me."Explaining how the innocuous remark "touched" a nerve, Offset continued, "When I went in my room, I damn near cried.""I felt bad as a father," the rapper added. "He don't even notice it’s drugs in here though. He don't know, but in my head it's like, him even just saying he want the same soda I want. It's just like, ‘Oh no, I'm influencing him.'"Anthony Hopkins

Over the years, the two-time Oscar winner has spoken candidly about December 29, 1975: the day he got sober.“I was drunk and driving my car here in California in a blackout,” he revealed in October 2025 on theNew York TimespodcastThe Interviewpodcast, “no clue where I was going, when I realized that I could have killed somebody—or myself, which I didn’t care about—and I realized that I was an alcoholic.”After reaching out to a friend for help, he was able to begin a new path. And in December 2025, he reached 50 years of sobriety, doing so with a message to those in a similar position he found himself in a half century ago.“Choose life instead of the opposite,” he said in an Instagram message. “Life life life and more life.”Jax Taylor

The Valleystarshared his decades-long battle with drugsin March 2025 after going to rehab."I am coming out that I'm an addict," Jax shared during the March 4 episode of Bravo'sHot Micpodcast. "I have substance issues, primarily with cocaine. It’s hard to say out loud.""I’ve been dealing with this on and off since I was 23 and now I’m 45," he continued. "There was times where I would stop doing it but then there were times where I’d go heavy on it.”Jax also gave up drinking, explaining, "I don’t necessarily think I have an alcohol problem, but the two go hand in hand. I can’t do cocaine without drinking. So, I just gave up both. I’m proud to say I’m 82, 83 days sober right now, which is the longest I’ve ever gone in my life without either.”Tom Holland

TheSpider-Man: No Way Homestarstopped drinking alcohol in 2022after feeling "enslaved" to the drink. "I was definitely addicted to alcohol, not shying away from that at all," Holland recalled on theOn Purpose with Jay Shettypodcast. "I think that anyone that has a beer everyday has probably got a little bit of a problem.""And then you would just reach that moment where you're like 'Wow, I shouldn't have had that last beer,'" the actor continued. "And you wake up the next day and you have a terrible headache."Since making the lifestyle change, Holland noticed he "could sleep better" and "handle problems better.""Things that would go wrong on set that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride," he shared. "I had so much such better mental clarity. I felt healthier. I felt fitter."Alec Baldwin

The star ofHunt for Red Octoberdoes not often speak to his sobriety journey, which began almost forty years ago."I don't discuss this a lot," he said duringa May 2024 podcast appearance. "I discuss it every now and then when it makes sense. I'm 39 years sober. I got sober Feb. 23, 1985."Speaking about his life after moving from New York City to Los Angeles in 1983, Alec explained, "I had a white-hot problem every day for two years. I think I snorted a line of cocaine from here to Saturn. We took it back home. I mean, cocaine was like coffee back then. Everybody was doing it all day long."And after quitting the drug, he soon turned to alcohol—only to also quit that dependency.Today, he relies on the city around him."New York relaxes me," he shared of his home. "I walk around and I see aspects of it that I've never seen before. I'll look at a building and I'll go, 'My God, I never noticed that about that building, those doors.' I have lunches and coffee and my friends."Anne Hathaway

ThePrincess Diariesalum shared in April 2024 that she ismore than five years sober. As she told theNew York Times, "That feels like a milestone to me."Her reasoning was clear. "I knew deep down it wasn't for me," she shared. "And it just felt so extreme to have to say, 'But none?' But none. If you're allergic to something or have an anaphylactic reaction to something, you don't argue with it. So I stopped arguing with it."And she's happy she made that decision. "My personal experience with it is that everything is better," she continued. "For me, it was wallowing fuel. And I don't like to wallow."Demi Moore

While accepting the 2018 Woman of the Year Award by the Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, a residential program for women recovering from substance and alcohol abuse, Moorespokeabout the "self-destructive path" that nearly derailed her career."I feel like there's a defining moments in our lives that shape who we are and the direction we go and early in my career, I was spiraling down a path of real self-destruction and no matter what successes I had, I just never felt good enough," the star recalled. "I had absolutely no value for myself and this self-destructive path, it very quickly brought me to a real crisis point and it wasn't clear at the time the reason. Maybe it was divine intervention."Moore, who sought treatment in 2012, thanked two unnamed people she "barely knew" for delivering something of an ultimatum to her to turn her life around. "Unless I was dead, I better show up," she quipped, adding that she was given "a chance to redirect the course of my life before I destroyed everything.""Clearly they saw more of me than I saw of myself," Moore noted. "And I'm so grateful because without that opportunity, without their believing me, I wouldn't be standing here today."Noah Cyrus

Cyrus shared in 2022 that she's been in recovery for her Xanax addiction since 2020. "It gave me so much structure in the time that I really needed structure, because I didn't want to just be sitting around and stirring in my brain," she toldRolling Stone. "It gave me hope."The singer added, "Once I felt that it was possible to silence things out for a second and numb your pain, it was over."She said her friends at the time "kind of cosigned" her drug use and "it just kind of becomes this dark pit, bottomless pit." But, during the pandemic, Cyrus said she was noticing challenges and felt she wasn't emotionally present. "I was completely nodding off and falling asleep," she recalled. "And unable to keep my head up or keep my eyes open, because I was so far gone."She eventually sought help and noted that "it took some time to get on my own two feet."Eminem

The "Lose Yourself" rapper reflected on his prior prescription pill abuse in his 2025 documentaryStans, noting an overdose and missing his daughterHailie Jade's birthday party prompted a change.“I cried because it was like, ‘Oh my god, I missed that,’” he said in the doc. “I kept saying to myself, ‘Do you want to f--king miss this again? Do you want to miss everything? If you can’t do it for yourself, you f--king pussy, at least do it for them.’”Eventually, channeling his energy back into his music helped the Oscar winner on his sobriety journey.“It did something. It turned the light on,” he explained. “I realized I’m not embarrassed anymore about [sobriety]. I started treating sobriety like a super power and I took pride in the fact that I was able to quit.”Dax Shepard

TheParenthoodalumwas sober for 16 yearsbefore relapsing in 2020 by taking Vicodin after a motorcycle accident."For the last eight weeks maybe, I don't really know…I'm on them all day," he said on hisArmchair Expertpodcast. "And I'm allowed to be on them at some dosage because I have a prescription and then I'm also augmenting that.""And I hate it," he continued. "And I'm lying to other people. And I know I have to quit. But my tolerance is going up so quickly that I'm now in a situation where I'm taking, you know, eight 30s a day, and I know that's an amount that's going to result in a pretty bad withdrawal. And I start getting really scared, and I'm starting to feel really lonely. And I just have this enormous secret."Jamie Lee Curtis

In 2018, theHalloweenstar got very candid about her 10-year addiction to opiates, which began in the late '80s after a minor plastic surgery "for my hereditary puffy eyes." The reslt was a prescription that changed her life. "I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving," she toldPeople. "No one knew. No one."When her sister visited her in the summer of 1998 and brought along prescribed painkillers for a rib injury, Curtis said she hit her rock bottom. "I knew she had them in her suitcase in our guest room closet," shetold the publication, crying at the memory. "I basically took all her opiates. When she was leaving I knew she would pack her suitcase and find her pills missing. I knew I had to acknowledge to her what I had done, and so I wrote her a note and left it on her suitcase. I came home that day, and she put her arms around me and told me she loved me and she was concerned about me and she was unwilling to watch me kill myself."She attended her first meeting on Feb. 3, 1999, the same day she revealed her struggle to her filmmaker husbandChristopher Guest. "He was incredulous that he'd never noticed," Curtis said, adding that she's been sober ever since.Drew Barrymore

Barrymore, who previously went to rehab for alcohol and drug addiction, shared in 2021 that she was marking a big milestone in her journey. "I'm just going to say something for the first time in a long time: I have not had a drink of alcohol in two and a half years," she said onCBS Mornings. "And it was something that I realized just did not serve me in my life."She added, "It's so funny. When we reveal ourselves and our truths and the things we've worked so hard for, it's so liberating and vulnerable all at the same time."Barrymore later explained to theLos Angeles Timesthat she doesn't use the "sober" label because she doesn't want people to think she's "some perfect Puritan.""I kept thinking, ‘I'll master this. I'll figure it out,'" she said in 2023. "And finally, I just realized: ‘You've never mastered this, and you never will.'"Bradley Cooper

TheA Star Is Bornactorstruggled with a cocaine addictionduring the early aughts before friendWill Arnettstepped in and confronted him out about his behavior."That was the first time I ever realized I had a problem with drugs and alcohol⁠," Cooper recalled during a 2022 appearance on theSmartlesspodcast. "I'll just never forget it."Crediting Arnett as "the reason" he went sober, Cooper added, "He took that risk of having a hard conversation with me that put me on a path of deciding to change my life."Brad Pitt

TheFight Clubstar spent years struggling with alcohol beforeCooper helped him get sober. "I got sober because of this guy," he told the audience at the 2020 National Board of Review Annual Awards after Cooper presented him with a trophy. "And every day's been happier ever since."Ryan Phillippe

In September 2023, theCruel Intentionsalum shared on Instagram that this was "the longest I've gone since I was a teen without some kind of nicotine or marijuanain my system (among other things).""Feeling thankful for the freedom that comes with breaking addictions and dependency on substance," he added. "Sobriety, clarity, and spiritual connectedness feels real good."Demi Lovato

After publicly celebrating six years of sobriety on tour in 2018, the singer stunned fans later that same year with the release ofthe confessional single "Sober,"which revealed that she had relapsed."Mama, I'm so sorry I'm not sober anymore / And Daddy please forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor / To the ones who never left me / We've been down this road before I'm so sorry, I'm not sober anymore," she sang.A month later, Lovato washospitalized for a near-fatal overdose."I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction," shewroteon Instagram two weeks later. "What I've learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet...I now need time to heal and focus on my sobriety and road to recovery. The love you have all shown me will never be forgotten and I look forward to the day where I can say I came out on the other side. I will keep fighting."Jada Pinkett Smith

In 2018, sherecalled battling her addictionsto sex and alcohol. "My sort of addictions jump. They jump around. When I was younger, I definitely think I had a sex addiction of some kind, yes, that everything could be fixed by sex," she said, before sharing about the time she realized she'd developed a troubling drinking problem."I remember reaching a rock bottom that time I was in the house by myself and I had those two bottles of wine and was going for the third bottle," she said. "And I was like, ‘Now hold up. You're in the this house by yourself going onto your third bottle of wine? You might have a problem.'""So I went cold turkey. That's the thing about me: I can go cold turkey. I am a binger, and I always have to watch myself and I can just get obsessed with things," she continued. "It's not what you're doing but how you're with it. Why you're doing it. It's the behavior that's attached to it because if you want to have a lot of sex, that's great, but why are you having all that sex? That's what you've got to look at."AJ Mclean

TheBackstreet Boysmember tried drugs for the first time before filming the music video for 2000's "The Call," tellingGood Morning Americayears later that he "was off the walls" during the shoot. He got sober in 2021 following a relapse andsaw numerous positive benefits just one year later, including losing 32 pounds in seven months by cutting out alcohol and fast food."I'm sticking this one out all the way,” he toldPeoplein July 2025. "It's a daily thing. But I have finally done what has been suggested amongst the sober community, and my life has flipped in a positive way."While AJ acknowledged he is "still learning, still growing," he's now confident in who he is."I've discovered new verbiage, such as boundaries, never really had those," he continued. "Now I have those, which is a blessing. AJ is a member of a group. He is a persona, but he doesn't define me as an individual.Alexander Jamesis who I am."Bow Wow

After the sudden death ofMac Miller, the rapper—bornShad Moss—took to Twitter to let his fans know that he'd once struggled witha cough syrup addiction."To the youth- Stop with these dumb ass drugs," he began his series of tweets. "Im going to let something out. When me andOmarionworked on FACE OFF album. I was high off lean everyday! When yall saw me on BET going off onToraei was high off lean. My attitude everything changed. My fans started to...Turn on me my family too. I never promoted lean in my songs. The whole time i was on the UCP tour withChris[Brown] I WAS SIPPING 4's atleast 7 times a day. I was addicted until our show in Cincinnati.. i came off stg and passed out woke up in the hospital i was having withdraws.""I never felt a pain like that ever," Bow Wow continued. "It was summer but i was walking round with 3 hoodies on because i was so cold. I missed the chicago show of that tour baltimore show BECAUSE I WAS F--KING HIGH AND SICK!!!! that s--t is not cool and i was doing it to be cool! Kick that s--t! Be a good son or daughter. Be the best you. Ima start being more vocal. We gotta save the youth from going out early. Parents watch your kids. Explain to them. We want yall to live man. I almost died f--king with syrup.""To this day im affected my stomach will...Never be the same and it hasnt been. DRUG FREE IS THE WAY TO BE! smarten up tighten up out here," he told his fans. "We cant lose no more of you. Not one! I love all yall. The young artist all the kids around the world.. dont follow a trend. Break the cycle. PEACE."Lily Allen

With the dual releases of her fourth studio albumNo Shameand memoirMy Thoughts Exactly, the singer spent much of 2018 getting brutally honest about the height of her addition problems. According to Allen, she was abusing cocaine and drinking to the point of being "parisitically drunk. Ultimately,Gwyneth PaltrowandChris Martinstaged an interventionaftershe accidentally headbuttedOrlando BloomatKate Hudson's Halloween party and knocked herself out.She toldThe Guardian,"Nothing seemed to reach or satisfy me. I remember waking up one morning in those dark days thinking, ‘Maybe it's time for heroin, because nothing else is working.'"Dennis Quaid

TheParent Trapactor battled a cocaine addiction throughout the '80s that sent him to rehab in 1990. As he later explained onToday, he grew up in the '60s and '70s when "there was a completely different attitude" towards the drug."It was even in some movie budgets. I was basically doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis during the '80s," he admitted in 2018. "I spent many, many a night screaming at God to 'Please take this away from me and I'll never do it again, cause I've only got an hour before I have to be at work.' Then at 4 o'clock in the afternoon I'd go, 'Oh it's not so bad.'""I had what I call a white light experience where I saw myself either dead or losing everything that meant anything to me," he continued. He had to sit down then-fiancéeMeg Ryanand explain what was going on. Then, he sought help. "That was the end of the love affair with me and cocaine."

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