From performing on a stage in New York City to chatting with Barbara Streisand during a music video, Sharon Porter Phillips has seen the many different sides of show business and somewhere along the way found herself settling in Bloomington.
Phillips is the owner and tour guide of Misguided Tours in Bloomington. Phillips uses her past acting experience to give interesting tours of the city.
Phillips moved to Indiana when her husband got a job at Sherwood Oaks Christian Church in Bloomington. She said she was not originally thrilled with coming to Bloomington but has come to love it.
“It has the flavor of a small town with all of the wonderful things that a big city has culturally,” Phillips said. “I love when the youth come back from the summer.”
Phillips quickly found something to do in Bloomington after the move.
Phillips started Misguided Tours after a trip to Asheville, North Carolina, where they had comedy tours of the city. She said she realized she wanted to do something like that, so she got a bus and filmed a comedy routine. Suddenly the business took off.
Since then, two other types of tours have been added to the comedy tour because Phillips said she had so much information she could not fit it into one anymore.
She said she learned many of her facts about the city, such as that Mark Cuban gave disco dance lessons at the armory in his time, simply by doing research.
“When you get started, you don’t have any business, so there’s the computer,” Phillips said. “I have become quite the history buff.”
Before she gave tours in Bloomington, Phillips had a history in show business.
“I have done everything in acting you can do,” Phillips said. “The only thing I have never done is be a mime because you can’t talk.”
Phillips began acting in New York City where she did industrial movies. At the time, Phillips had young children, so she only acted in segments.
Phillips said she also found herself in children’s theater as a puppeteer.
“I was the only woman puppeteer because most women couldn’t hold the puppets, but I could.” said Phillips, crediting her strength to carrying around her young children.
Also while in New York City, Phillips said she worked on a music video with Streisand.
“I’ve been so impressed with Barbara Streisand since I was 16 years old,” Phillips said. “She has a reputation for being a diva, but she was so sweet.”
Phillips said she suspected ulterior motives for her sweetness when she later heard Streisand had a thing for one of the men on the set and had been on her best behavior.
From there Phillips was cast in “The Pelican Brief,” a movie that allowed her to meet several well known celebrities, including Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, and was the key to her becoming a part of the Screen Actors Guild.
In addition to that, Phillips has done a movie in Washington, D.C., directed many commercials and been a reenactor at a Renaissance Festival in Maryland, which Phillips said she really enjoyed.
Today, Phillips has not let show business go.
Since being here, she has worked on three movies, including “Rosehill,” which she recently watched at the IU Cinema.
“You go to a film you worked on, and you hope you’re in there,” Phillips said. “The only thing worse than being on the cutting room floor is going and seeing a close up of your 65-year-old face.”
She has done radio work for WVNI Spirit 95, directed many dinner theater productions and been featured in the homes section of the Herald-Times.
“I just like to do everything,” Phillips said. “Heaven forbid there’s something in show business that I didn’t do.”
