Bijou Phillips

Bijou Phillips ethnicity

Phillips in 2007, photo by s_bukley/Bigstock.com

Birth Name: Bijou Lilly Phillips

Place of Birth: Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.

Date of Birth: April 1, 1980

Ethnicity: Irish, English, possibly other

Bijou Phillips is an American actress, model, socialite, and singer. She is the daughter of singer John Phillips (John Edmund Andrew Phillips) and actress, singer, and model Geneviève Waïte. Her father had Irish and English ancestry. Her mother was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Her half-siblings are actress Mackenzie Phillips and singer and actress Chynna Phillips. Bijou is married to actor and disc jockey Danny Masterson, with whom she has a daughter.

Bijou’s paternal grandfather was Claude Andrew Phillips (the son of John Phillips and Anna Moran). Claude was born in New York. John was born in Canada, to Irish parents, Thomas Phillips and Marcella Mercy Burgess. Anna was born in New York, to Irish parents.

Bijou’s paternal grandmother was Edna Gertrude Gaines (the daughter of Edmund Franklin Gaines and Zora Gertrude Hardgrave). Edna was born in Mexico, to American parents. Edmund was the son of Charles William Gaines and Martha Isabell Black. Zora was the daughter of Jasper Newton Hardgrave and Winnie Jane Steele.

Bijou’s father was said to have partial Cherokee Native American ancestry. It is not clear if this ancestry has been verified/documented.

Sources: Genealogies of Bijou Phillips (focusing on her father’s side) – https://www.geni.com
https://gw.geneanet.org

Bijou’s paternal grandfather, Claude Andrew Phillips, on the 1900 U.S. Census – https://familysearch.org

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5 Responses

  1. andrew says:

    I wanted to add her father

  2. passingtime85 says:

    Correction.

    According to this article John Phillips was partly of Jewish ancestry and by proxy Bijou would be as well.

    http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/12/phillips200712

    • follers says:

      I read this claim about the “secret actual father”. I think it is highly dubious (as is Phillips’ mother being “Cherokee”, by the way, a much more frequently repeated claim).

      John Phillips was born August 30, 1935, in Parris Island, South Carolina. His parents were Edna Gertrude Gaines and Claude Andrew Phillips. Parris Island was a small town that housed a lot of soldiers living at its Marine training facility. The native Jewish population of Parris Island is minimal or non-existent.

      Phillips’ parents married in 1920 in Oklahoma. They had children born around 1923 and 1925. The whole family was still living together on the 1940 U.S. Census.
      https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/VR1L-LHD

      So, is it possible that John Phillips’ biological father was a Jewish soldier passing through Parris Island who impregnated his mother roughly around December 30, 1934? Sure, it’s possible, just like anything is possible.

      But without a better source than a single gossipy line in Vanity Fair, it’s an extremely tenuous claim.

      For my money, John Phillips looked at least somewhat like Claude Andrew Phillips.
      (a picture of Claude)
      http://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=dowfam3&id=I324073

  3. VeRoni says:

    yeah she is like 25% cherokee on her dad’s side he was 50% NA his mother was cherokee

    • Anonymous says:

      I’ve heard that too. You can see it in the teeth of she and John Phillips other children. In all of them, that phenotype must have been recessive, as I have seen people who, together with their siblings, appear to be far more amerindian (broad faces, “Asian” eyes, dark complexions, lack of facial hair on the men) but say that it was only their GG or GGG Grandmother who was a full blooded Cherokee, Chickasaw or wahtever tribe and the rest white.

      Here is what John Phillips looked like a few decades back:

      http://www.papajohnphillips.com/

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