HE’S a psychiatrist but one who, over the past three decades, has carved a very special niche for himself. “Shrink to the stars,” Phil Stutz says, air quotes implied, though also with a degree of playful pride.
Phil (76) lives near Beverly Hills and receives clients in his apartment, which overlooks the crisp blue tennis courts and shimmering, sprinkler-fed fairways of a sprawling country club. The four walls of his book-lined study have been privy to the fears, failings and neuroses of assorted actors, directors, producers, writers, agents, deal brokers and studio executives.
His client list is closely guarded, but it includes the actress turned wellness businesswoman Gwyneth Paltrow, who interviewed Phil on her Goop podcast, and the actor Jonah Hill, who directed Stutz, a Netflix documentary about his therapist, which was produced by actors Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara.
So many of his patients have won Oscars that, some years ago, he was forced to develop what he calls the “Stutz 96-hour Academy Awards principle”, which states that the euphoria will wear off in approximately four days, after which all your usual hang-ups and angst will return and you will be back where you started.
“The great dream of the western world is to know what’s going on inside the head of a star,” he says at one point. And if you want to know what’s going on in the collective head of Hollywood, there is no one better qualified to take you there than Phil.
He’s wiry and bald with a white goatee. Eighteen years ago, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and his New York City accent has a strained, tremulous quality that sometimes sounds at odds with his taste for profanity.
Before moving
