How old was Mackenzie Phillips on One Day At A Time? Actress recalls snorting coke with co-star Valerie Bertinelli during lunch break 

Mackenzie Phillips rose to fame with the show One Day at a Time (Image Via Instagram/@mackphillips)
Mackenzie Phillips rose to fame with the show One Day at a Time (Image Via Instagram/@mackphillips)

As per recent news report by The Daily Mail, Mackanzie Phillips recalled snorting coke with co-star Valarie Bertinelli while shooting their family-friendly sitcom One Day at a Time.

Phillips told Fox News at the Chiller Theatre Expo in Parsipanny, New Jersey that she and Valarie would unwind from the tiring shooting schedule at her home with some wine and cocaine.

Mackenzie Phillips was 16-year-old when she started acting in the sitcom One Day at a Time and Valarie Bertinelli was 15 when she started acting in the hit series. From 1975 to 1984, the two portrayed sisters Julie and Barbara Cooper on the show; however, Phillips battled substance abuse and was dismissed twice.

'So this might surprise you that during lunch break, Valerie and I would drive to my house, get in the pool, drink wine, and snort coke,' Phillips told Fox News
'But Valerie talks about it openly, so it’s not like I’m pulling her covers or anything,' said Mackanenzie Phillips. 'The thing was that I was the, you know, Valerie didn’t have the kind of addiction that I had, she didn’t have addiction.'

Mackenzie Phillip's struggle with drugs

One Day at a Time fame Mackenzie Phillips is quite popular for her troubled personal life. However, in her 2011 memoir titled High on Arrival, the 64-year-old actress has opened up about her struggle with substance abuse and has written some disturbing details about it.

Mackenzie Phillips began her rise to fame at the age of twelve. She is the first daughter of renowned rock artist John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. She had already tried with booze and strong narcotics by that point. She wrote in her memoir about growing up in a "all-access kingdom of hippie freedom and heroin cool" while her own career was developing in Hollywood. Her life was worthy of a movie plot.

Mackanzie Phillips claimed that as early as age 11, her father frequently drugged her. Ten years of abuse followed, including sexual assault at the age of 19 on her wedding night, reportedly leading to a pregnancy and an abortion. The actress used medicines to make the pain go away.

Phillips, just sixteen, was hired alongside Valerie Bertinelli as Julie Cooper on the hit sitcom One Day at a Time. From 1975 till 1984, the show focused on a single mother raising two daughters. Her portrayal of a disobedient adolescent reflected some of her personal hardships.

Mackanzie Phillips was arrested in 1977 for possessing cocaine and being intoxicated in public. She wed rock group manager Jeffrey Sessler two years later, and the couple divorced less than three years later.

Unfortunately, because to her drug use, Mackanzie Phillips' greatest roles were already in the past by the early 1980s. She shifted her focus from acting to music at this period, playing with the New Mamas and the Papas, her father's band's brief comeback.

Shane Fontayne, the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen, and Mackanzie Phillips were married in 1986. A year later, they welcomed their first child, Shane. She made appearances in the Disney Channel series So Weird and the Disney film Double Teamed in the late 1990s. She also had small roles in ER, 7th Heaven, and Cold Case.

Fontayne's father, John, died of heart failure a year after Phillips divorced her in 2000.

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Edited by Saumeya Mehrotra