RELATED: See Jack Nicholson’s Lookalike Son, TV’s Newest Heartthrob. Read the original article on Best Life. Gracie Phillips is a 23-year-old model currently signed to Next Model Management Miami and One Management. According to her Instagram, she has been working in the modeling industry for nearly five years now. She has already modeled with major brands and companies such as Too Faced Cosmetics and South Beach swimsuits. But it appears Gracie has her goals set on working with Sports Illustrated, as she’s posted several swimsuit model shoots targeted at the 2021 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Search. “To be on the cover [of Sports Illustrated], on the pages of this magazine, filled with so many other inspiring, empowering, fearless individuals would be a dream come true,” she wrote in an Instagram post in February. In December, she posted on Instagram saying she got a “callback/virtual casting” with Sports Illustrated, calling it “a huge accomplishment.” “DREAM CHASING and I’m just getting started❤️!!!!!” she wrote. Gracie is also the daughter of actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who is best known for playing Ritchie Valens in La Bamba. He had Gracie with ex-wife Kelly Phillips, who is a former Penthouse model. “I’m fourth generation; my mom, my grandmother and my great grandmother all modeled so it runs in the family,” Gracie told Maxim in 2018. However, Gracie says she kept her father a secret for two years while trying to establish her modeling career. “When I started, I really just wanted to try and do it by myself,” she told the Daily Mail in Feb. 2018. “As I was looking on social media, I saw positives but I also saw the negatives—people bashing the kids of people who were in the industry, saying they’re only doing this because of this. When I started, I never wanted anyone to say to me, she did this job because of her dad, because of her last name, because of who she is.” And for more celeb content sent right to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. Lou Diamond Phillips doesn’t seem to feel slighted by his daughter’s decision to keep their familial ties a secret for so long. He told the Daily Mail that he was proud of Gracie’s choice to go it alone and supportive of her subsequent career. A post shared by Gracie Phillips (@gracieephillips) “I’m incredibly proud of Grace and the fact that she wanted to earn this, she wanted to make her own way–I was supportive of that from the beginning. She’s been booking jobs, she’s been receiving praise and getting incredibly good feedback based on her own merit, without getting any qualifications,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want her to say she’s my progeny but at the same time, there’s no doubt it’s very, very rewarding and I’m very, very pleased that she can take all the credit for this herself as she should.” The actor also told Fox News in 2018 that Gracie was “doing the footwork.” He added: “She got an agent on her own. She didn’t ask me for any help. As a matter of fact, she did not advertise she was my daughter to other people. She really wanted to earn it.” When Gracie got the Swimsuit Illustrated callback in Dec. 2020, her dad proudly tweeted: “So incredibly proud of my @GraceeePhillips! She made the callback list for @SI_Swimsuit! Massive congrats! I know she worked hard at this, submitting herself and believing in herself. Way to go, kid!” Gracie told Fox News in 2018 that her dad is “very supportive in everything that I do, but when it comes to bikini and lingerie stuff, he does get a little protective.” Gracie is one of Lou’s four daughters. He had two other daughters with Preston—Isabella, who is Gracie’s twin, and Lili. He then had daughter Indigo with his current wife, makeup artist Yvonne Boismier. He said he’s tried to give all of his children a normal childhood, which included “going shopping and cooking dinner, taking out the trash and picking up dog poop.“ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb “It’s literally just not putting on airs and pretensions and making sure the kids see you as dad first when you’re around,” he told the Daily Mail. Now that she’s gained some footing in the modeling world, Gracie doesn’t mind people knowing about the connection to her dad. “I wanted to make a name for myself on my own and be known as just Gracie Phillips, not as Lou Diamond Phillips’s daughter Gracie Phillips,” she told Meaww in March 2020. “I wanted to work based on my own merit and to earn things myself—once I proved that I could do that, I had no problem talking publicly about my family.”
