Actor Bijou Phillips has filed for divorce from Danny Masterson, just days after the former “That ’70s Show” star was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for two rape convictions
From
ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer
September 19, 2023, 7:24 p.m. ET
• 3 min reading
LOS ANGELES – Bijou Phillips has filed for divorce from Danny Masterson, just days after the former “That ’70s Show” star was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison on two rape convictions.
According to the court’s website, Phillips, a 43-year-old actress, filed a petition in Santa Barbara Superior Court on Monday to end her nearly 12-year marriage to 47-year-old Masterson. The couple has a 9-year-old daughter. Further details were initially not known.
An attorney for Phillips did not respond to emails and a representative for Masterson declined to comment. Masterson maintains his innocence and his lawyers have said they will appeal, citing evidentiary and constitutional issues surrounding his conviction.
Phillips sat in court with other Masterson family members during two lengthy trials, the first of which ended in a mistrial and the second in a conviction on two of three 2003 rape counts.
She cried as the guilty verdicts were announced in court on May 31 and at times showed similar emotions during his hearing on September 7, when a judge sentenced Masterson to a prison term that will see him serve 25 1/2 years before he can plead is on probation.
In a letter to the judge before Masterson’s sentencing, Phillips praised him as a husband and father.
“I can say that Danny has been a life-saving partner to me in every sense of the word,” Phillips wrote, an apparent reference to Masterson’s care for her and her daughter after Phillips had a kidney transplant in 2017.
The letter, which was heavily redacted before being made public after the verdict, said she and Masterson bought a farm in rural Santa Barbara County, which he turned into a vineyard after revelations of the police investigation led to that he lost all his acting work.
Phillips called him a “great father” and said, “Our daughter and I are heartbroken that he is not home with us.”
Phillips, daughter of “The Mamas and the Papas” singer-songwriter John Phillips and actress Genevieve Waite, was a model as a teenager and released an album of her own singing before turning to acting. She has appeared in films such as Almost Famous and television shows such as Raising Hopes and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
She has been with Masterson since 2004. They announced their engagement in 2009 and married in Ireland in 2011.
Masterson starred alongside Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace on the Fox retro sitcom “That ’70s Show” from 1998 to 2006. The Los Angeles police announced in 2017 that they were investigating him for sexual assault, and he was arrested in 2020. Kutcher and Kunis apologized after their own letters to the judge asking for leniency for Masterson became public and drew criticism.
He was convicted in 2003 of raping two women he knew through the Church of Scientology. Both testified that he mixed drugs into their drinks and forcibly raped them. On the third count, which involved the rape of a former girlfriend in 2001, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.