After a career in publishing and a stint as story editor at Paramount, she formed Bill/Phillips Productions with then-husband Michael Phillips and actor Tony Bill and at age 26 won an Academy Award as co-producer of the blockbuster "The Sting" (1973). The team followed with another hit, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), but Phillips's career went into eclipse after a period of cocaine abuse, chronicled in her scathing, autobiographical, tell-all bestseller "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again" (1991). She wrote a sequel "Driving Under the Influence" which was published in 1995.