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.