Bijou Phillips has said her life is “hanging by a thread” as she continues the urgent search for a kidney donor.
Earlier this month, the model and actor, 45, issued an online plea to find a kidney donor after being hospitalized due to complications with her first transplant. Phillips revealed in a new interview with US Weekly that following her social media post, 1,300 people have come forward wanting to get tested to see if they were a match.
“Out of those, I think we have like 50 or 60 that could possibly be a match,” she said. The outlet noted that Phillips’ blood type is O negative.
Currently, the Almost Famous star is on dialysis, a life-sustaining treatment that acts as a stand-in kidney, filtering waste and toxins from the bloodstream, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
“I could make it on dialysis for a couple years, or I could get an infection in my line tomorrow and be gone in a few days. I’m really hopeful, [but] it’s an extremely urgent situation,” Phillips said, adding that she has needed a transplant for a year. “I’m sort of hanging on by a thread.”
The Bully actor continued: “I was possibly going to be able to get a kidney from my brother [Aron Wilson], but he wasn’t a match. He’s maybe going to be able to get into the kidney exchange, but they’re not sure. They’ve already denied him once, so he’s gonna try again.”
A kidney exchange, as described by UC Davis Health, is a program in which two or more incompatible donor-recipient pairs are matched to give a kidney to a compatible recipient in another pair, essentially “exchanging” donors.
“If he gives his kidney, it would put me higher on the list,” Phillips shared. “So then I would get the next kidney that’s a match for me. I have antibodies [that make kidney rejection more likely], so it makes it complicated.”
Phillips was born with underdeveloped kidneys. She received her first kidney transplant, which was donated by a friend, in 2017.
“I’ve been immunosuppressed for so long,” Phillips said.
Now a single mother to 12-year-old daughter, Fianna, whom she shares with her ex-husband, That ’70s Show star Danny Masterson, Phillips said she’s fighting for her life so she can be there for her daughter.
“Things are different. I want to be here for her, and I have to be here for her. The fight is back. That had been gone for a long time. I’m it. I’m all she’s got,” she said.
Phillips and Masterson were married from 2011 until she filed for divorce in 2023, two weeks after Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in a California prison for the rape of two women at his Los Angeles home in 2003.
