Lou Diamond Phillips: No Diamond in the Rough

A few hours later, Phillips arrives promptly for our meeting at Barney Greengrass on the upper West Side. I see him walking down the street, and notice that every single person who walks past says hello. In the restaurant, it's the same thing: the waiters, the other customers, the guy cutting lox behind the counter all smile.

"Is it always like this?" I ask, because, truthfully, I wasn't aware that Phillips was such a big star.

"Absolutely. There are people who stop me every day, everywhere we go. When Kelly and I are shopping, or outside the theater every night, or on a plane, everyone is very sweet and they tell me how much they like my work."

"What is it that all these people recognize you from?"

"Oh, I doubt you can watch cable television for a week and not see one of my movies. The Dark Wind, Shadow of the Wolf and Dakota are cable perennials. Plus the Young Gun films, which have a lot of fans. So people see me, and I never try to hide from them or act weird; they see I'm accessible and they respond to that."

"Talking about Young Guns, Charlie Sheen is a Movieline favorite."

Phillips shakes his head. "You know, whenever Charlie gives an interview, he just says anything that pops into his head. But, after a while, you gotta wonder if this is a Howard Stern thing, if the guy is just putting you on, because, man, I read Sheen's interviews and I just can't believe what he says."

"Talking about Howard Stern..."

Now Phillips groans. "Do we have to?" he pleads.

"Absolutely," I say. Phillips knows exactly where I'm going. A couple of years back, he went on Stern's radio show--which was also broadcast as a two-parter on E! Entertainment Television--to tell his side of the story about the breakup of his first marriage to Julie Cypher. A couple of years after their divorce, it came out that Cypher had left Phillips for rocker Melissa Etheridge. As you can imagine, Stern was merciless.

"Actually," Phillips says, "I thought Howard went pretty easy on me. Considering."

"Easy on you?" I shriek. "I thought I would die when he said, 'So, Lou, when your wife first went lesbian, were you saying, "Oh man, I must have been bad in bed or something'"?' What the hell ever made you go on that show?"

"Well, let me put it the right way. When Julie and I split up, I always told interviewers that our marriage ended because Julie needed to find out more about herself. Which I think was true. I knew all about her relationship with Melissa, but it wasn't my place to say anything; I was very supportive of them and their relationship. Very supportive. We were all friends. Then, years later, Melissa [decided to] come out. And right after that, she and Julie started to do all this press. And in some of those stories, Julie cast aspersions on our marriage. In some articles, she would say how terrific I was, and in others, she would say things that really hurt. I felt she had no right to do that to me, that their coming out was their business, and there was no need to drag me into it. Then Howard Stern called and kept saying, Lou, if you don't come on here and talk to me. I'm gonna dog ya.' You know Howard, he loves it when someone's wife leaves him for a woman.''

"You were already married to Kelly by that time. How did she feel about all this?"

"Kelly and I felt like we were under fire, that our names were being brought up in magazine stories that had absolutely nothing to do with us. So I decided to go on with Howard. And Kelly came because she wanted to defend me..."

"To prove that you really are great in bed?" I ask.

Phillips smacks my hand. "No, to show that we were really OK, and that we felt lousy about being brought into their relationship. I didn't feel the need to air my laundry the way Julie and Melissa did, but they had done it so I needed to respond. I'll tell you, I'm very grateful to Howard, because he could have been cruel to me and he wasn't. There were some moments that were uncomfortable, to be sure, but I felt he was really courteous to me."

"You had the best line on the show, Lou. Howard was raging on and on about how he'd like to watch Julie and Melissa, how that's every man's fantasy, and you said you weren't interested. When Howard pushed you on this, you said, 'I may be off-white, but I'm very vanilla.' I'll bet that most of Howard's audience didn't have a clue what you meant, but I thought it was brilliant."

"Thank you. And now, can we please talk about something else?"

"Sure thing. You said last night that Courage Under Fire was your first big studio film..."

"It was. The other films I did, like La Bamba, Stand and Deliver, even the Young Guns movies, they were either made for very little money or they were picked up after they were made. I don't know why I'm not thought of for those studio films, but I really hope I will be from now on. I'd still do the independent films that I like, stories that I wrote, or want to direct, but I'd like to be brought into the studio stable..."

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