Hollywood
Under Siege
by Frank Swertlow

TV Guide/October 16, 1993

The armed holdup of former _Knots Landing_ star Michelle Phillips outside a
West Hollywood restaurant several weeks ago wasn't that unusual for Hollywood:
a gun waving at a star, the thought that death was near, shadowy figures
running off into the dark (see details, p. 19). But it was just that--its
ordinariness--which hammered home a new and often ignored truth about
Hollywood: Many of America's best-known stars live in a state of fear. Some
items from the police blotter:

*Jackie Collins, author of _Hollywood Wives_ and sister of actress Joan
Collins, found an Uzi pointed at her cheek when she pulled into a friend's
Beverly Hills driveway late one night. Sitting next to her was Sidney Poitier's
wife, Joanna. "It was like a TV-movie," Collins remembers, with the gunman
growling at her, "Don't move, or I'll blow your head off." When Collins saw
"the hate in his eyes"--and his finger on the trigger--she slammed her foot
onto the accelerator of her Cadillac and escaped.

*Meredith Baxter (_Family Ties_, "The Betty Broderick Story") was driving with
her 8-year-old this spring when she was approached by two men who ordered her
out of the car. She began screaming and resisted. When Baxter finally got out
of the car with her son, she was "so made," she went back to the car to
retrieve some belongings--including, Baxter remembers incredulously, "my copy
of the Sunday crossword puzzle." One of the men said to her, "Let's not make
this a murder." They took the car, which was later found, but she still regrest
she didn't "kick them or something." Baxter says her young son felt expecially
bad because, as a watcher of TV superheroes, "he felt he should be able to do
something."

*A gunman stopped Don Rickles (_Daddy Dearest_) and his wife, Barbara, late one
afternoon in West Hollywood, then drove off in their Jaguar XJ6. "I just don't
want to talk about it because these people are still at large," said Rickles at
the time.

*A well-known TV actress arriving at her Beverely Hills home one evening, found
that a gang of would-be kidnappers had entered the grounds of her gated house.
Outmaneuvering them in her driveway, she pulled a gun on the intruders, who
fled. The actress, who also has been hunted by a stalker, now carries at least
one pistol with her at all times--even though she is not licensed to carry a
concealed weapon.

*Actress Morgan Fairchild's ("Based on an Untrue Story") Jaguar was stolen in a
bump-and-run attack in the San Fernando Valley several years ago. "I was
grateful they didn't hut me," she says. "I could have been killed. Now when I
drive, I leave big spaces between me and other cards when I'm stopped at a
traffic light to give myself room to get away. I pay attention at sidewalks. I
really watch the people. I watch who is following me."

Stories like these are a constant topic of conversation in Hollywood. The stars
and the producers whose shows have sometimes been accused of promoting violence
are now, ironically, finding it at their own doorstep.

"There is an overall feeling of paranoia here," claims one TV producer who
requested anonymity. "Violence has invaded every aspect of our lives." Adds
Michelle Phillips: "I know that many of my Hollywood friends live behind gates
and don't let their children play outside the gates. I've never felt that
threatened. But once you are exposed, it does make you paranoid.

Members of America's show-biz royalty have always seemed immune from the
terrors that many people in big cities face daily. But no longer. Random
violence has crept behind the elctronic gates of their mansions and movie
studios--and no one feels safe. Celebrities--and the people they work with--are
being attacked with startling frequency.