Grande Dame Joan Collins...
So when did she change her mind about wanting to be a boy? With a smile, she says, ‘I think when I went on holiday to France when I was around 15.’ When she discovered boys? ‘When they discovered me!’ she laughs.
Since then, her striking beauty has famously caught the eye of many of the world’s most desired men. Frank Sinatra asked her to fly to Hamburg to have dinner with him, but she turned him down as she did Dean Martin, Richard Burton and the US senator Bobby Kennedy.
‘Frank Sinatra is not and never has been interested in talking about anything other than himself,’ she witheringly writes in her latest bestseller, My Unapologetic Diaries. Her unflinchingly honest book gives a glimpse into her impossibly glamorous social life between 1989 and 2009 when she rubbed shoulders with Sir Roger Moore and Princess Diana as well as Frank, whom she’d first met in the early Sixties. ‘Sinatra was known for being a one-night stand and I’ve never done that,’ Joan confides. Of Bobby Kennedy she says, ‘I remember dancing with him at this nightclub called The Factory. I would never have considered dating him, but he was charismatic.’
Joan has dedicated her book to her fifth husband Percy Gibson and reveals in it how they met in April 2000 when she was touring America in the play Love Letters, for which he was the company manager.
The couple fell madly in love, despite more than a 30-year age gap – he’s now 56 and she’s 89 – and defied sceptics by recently celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. ‘I’m so lucky’, she whispers to me. ‘He takes care of everything. He takes care of my children and all our finances. He’s the love of my life. It’s a great marriage, a great relationship.
‘Of course, we have our little spats like other couples might do, but we’ve both got our safe spaces. He has his office at home, I have my walk-in closet. And separate bathrooms. We’re really lucky. I realise most people can’t have two bathrooms.’
Given that Joan has a life that’s busier than most people’s half her age, Percy doesn’t notice the age gap at all. ‘I think what is important is not age, but how you look, feel and behave,’ says Joan, who says she still thinks of herself as a 40-year-old woman. In fact, she believes it’s ‘tremendously rude’ to ask a woman her age or discuss it. ‘My mother’s generation never did it,’ she says. ‘But you know, people have been calling me an older woman since I was 38!’
Having battled against the ageist attitudes of film and TV companies, she does think the tide is now turning as older women are increasingly being cast in leading roles. ‘I think maybe at last producers and directors have realised that, if they are going to be showing real life in the movies, then they are going to have to have people who are older. Look at Helen Mirren and Judi Dench – they are far more popular than me,’ she says modestly.
But Joan has plenty of projects in the pipeline herself and has no plans to retire. ‘People say, why don’t you put your feet up? I do put my feet up and I don’t do anything I don’t enjoy,’ says the actress (she prefers not to be called an ‘actor’), who recently filmed the medieval drama series Glow and Darkness alongside Jane Seymour, and the movie Tomorrow Morning, out now.
She says her secret to looking as good as she does, aside from eating well and exercising regularly, is simply ‘having great parents who gave me good genes’. She also doesn’t smoke, avoided drugs or drinking excessively, and moisturises ‘all the time’. She adds, ‘I never put my face in the sun. I only allow my body and legs to tan.’
Joan always gets plenty of time in the sunshine as she spends each summer in her picturesque St Tropez villa where our Saga photoshoot took place. She and Percy share three homes – they also have residences in London’s Belgravia and Los Angeles – but Joan’s home in the south of France is the one she describes as ‘paradise’, and we can see why.
The stunning villa is perched on a hill with breathtaking views of St Tropez and the Mediterranean Sea and is so tucked away that Percy has to come and meet us en route to guide us down the dusty off-road track that leads you there. The villa, decorated in Provençal style, has a beautiful garden leading down to an infinity pool and a long, elegant outdoor dining area. As Joan poses for our photoshoot on a seat in her garden, wearing a designer leopard print dress and statement jewellery, it’s obvious she is blissfully happy here. ‘One of my great joys is entertaining at the villa – we have wonderful lunches and dinners. It’s freedom, fun, joy and friends,’ she says.
She’s also hosted numerous friends at the villa, which she bought after touring in the play Private Lives in 1990. She first fell in love with St Tropez after holidaying with Natalie Wood in 1970 and visitors to her villa have included Julian Clary, artist Tracey Emin and Liza Minnelli.
Although Joan clearly loves her life with Percy, she’s had more than her fair share of heartache in the past. One of the first men she fell for in Hollywood was Warren Beatty, whom she dated for 18 months after meeting him at an LA party in 1959.
They got engaged in 1960 and she became pregnant but decided to have an abortion as she felt it was too early in her career to start a family. So why did they break up? ‘Everything has an ending – apart from Percy and me. I was only 27 and he was three years younger and it wasn’t working any more. His need for sex several times a day wore me out,’ she recalls.
‘But really it was because he made me turn down several movies, including Sons and Lovers. It was stupid of me not to have done it, but you make mistakes. Show me a person who hasn’t made a mistake and I’ll show you somebody who hasn’t lived.
‘The next offer I got was with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in The Road To Hong Kong. He said, “You can’t do this. It’s absolute crap.” I said, “Well, I’m doing it” and off I went.’
Prior to her romance with Warren, Joan had married film idol Maxwell Reed in 1952 when she was just 19. The couple split up after four years and in 1963 she went on to marry Anthony Newley, and have two children, Tara and Alexander (known as Sacha), but that marriage ended in 1970. She then married Ron Kass in 1972 and they had a daughter, Katyana (Katy), before splitting up in 1983. She will only refer to her fourth husband, Peter Holm, as ‘The Swede’. ‘That was a momentous mistake,’ she says of the marriage in 1985 that lasted just two years.
In between marriages she worked hard to combine being a single parent with a demanding film career. ‘My children mean so much to me. But it was very hard,’ she recalls.
Of course, Joan’s career took off in a big way when she landed the role of the scheming and powerful Alexis Carrington in Eighties soap Dynasty. So convincing was she that she’s been inextricably associated with the shoulder-pad wearing diva ever since. ‘People enjoy this fantasy that I am a super-bitch because of Alexis,’ she says. ‘I think it’s utterly ridiculous that powerful, resilient women are portrayed as dangerous, whereas in my experience it’s the predatory men who are the real threat.’
Aside from playing Alexis, Joan has appeared in more than 70 films, hundreds of TV shows and starred on both the West End and Broadway stage. Auditioning in those pre #MeToo days, sadly she was subjected to unwanted advances from some studio bigwigs, including one producer whom she was shocked to find lying in the bath after he summoned her to meet him in New York to talk about a film role. ‘He invited me to jump in and I turned on my heels and got out of the building as fast as I could,’ she says.
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| Joan with Jackie & Brother Bill.. |
As well as being a successful actress, Joan is also a bestselling author of 17 books, not quite as many as her late sister Jackie, who had written 32 books before she died in September 2015. A series about the glamorous sisters, called Joan & Jackie, is currently in development in which two young actresses will play Joan – one as a small girl and then another as she arrived in Hollywood.
Jackie only told Joan she had stage 4 cancer weeks before she passed away at the age of 77. ‘I was tremendously upset for about three months. I cried every day,’ says Joan. ‘The reason I was shocked was that our mother died of breast cancer in 1962 when she was in her fifties. I can’t tell you enough how important it is to have mammograms every year and be checked regularly. Jackie knew she had a lump and she thought it would go away. She would be alive today if she had gone to a doctor earlier. Oh, don’t make me cry…’ she says welling up with tears.
Months before losing Jackie, Joan had received one of the biggest honours of her life when she was made a dame and this June she was delighted to take part in the Platinum Jubilee Pageant to celebrate The Queen’s 70 years on the throne. ‘She is a wonderful woman,’ says Joan of The Queen, whom she’s met several times. ‘She’s inspirational. She’s terribly easy to talk to and terribly interested. It’s the sort of conversation you could have with your next-door neighbour.’
Soon we’ll see Joan playing The Queen’s late aunt-in-law, Wallis Simpson, whose relationship with the Duke of Windsor scandalised the Royal Family and led to his abdication. She’ll star in In Bed With the Duchess, written by her friend Louise Fennell. ‘I play the Duchess of Windsor from the time that the Duke died right up until her death. It’s a fabulous story,’ reveals Joan. And with her infinite reserves of energy, naturally she can’t wait to get working on it.
My Unapologetic Diaries by Joan Collins (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £9.99) is out in paperback now
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