Joan features in a fabulous spread in the latest issue of top German magazine 'Freizeit Revue' which is on sale from Thursday. Here is a preview of the article and one of the fabulous shots by Sven Doornkaat...
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
PRESS UPDATE: FREIZEIT REVUE .. NOVEMBER 7TH 2013 ..
Joan features in a fabulous spread in the latest issue of top German magazine 'Freizeit Revue' which is on sale from Thursday. Here is a preview of the article and one of the fabulous shots by Sven Doornkaat...
EVENT REVIEW: NEXT MAGAZINE .. ONE NIGHT WITH JOAN NEW YORK. B.B.KINGS .. NOVEMBER 5TH 2013..
Hollywood legend Joan Collins dishes the dirt on her co-stars, husbands and more in One Night With Joan
“My life has been a roller-coaster! More ups and downs than Joan Rivers’ Face.”
November 06, 2013
(Joan Collins)
Last night, Hollywood icon Joan Collins packed BB King’s with fans eager to hear her tales of fame and fortune. After a playful intro from Scissor Sisters front woman Ana Matronic, it seemed that Joan had planned to open her one-woman show by interrupting a short Dynasty montage as she stormed onto the stage in her shimmering disco-ball pants, silver satin blouse and sparkling jewels. But she could barely get the “Stop! Wait! Hold on!” out as the crowd rose to their feet and drowned her out with applause.
Joan started out with tales from her childhood and early acting career, showing with a sense of self-deprecating humor that family connections in show business was no guarantee of glamorous roles. She took us through a multimedia memoir of her life and work, sharing personal details about her family, her scandals, her many marriages (and divorces) and reminding her fans of their favorite clips and headlines. And boy did she spill the tea on her fellow Hollywood stars!
On Bing Crosby: “…a grumpy old man… It may have looked like fun, but it was like kissing an ashtray.”
On Joan Crawford (just after a face-to-face snub): “I’ve always admired you! My mother loved you so much, she named me after you!”
On the film Cleopatra: “The face that launched a thousand ships. Or as we called her, ‘A face that lunched on fish and chips.’ I was talking about Cleopatra, not Elizabeth Taylor!”
On herself: “My life has been a roller-coaster! More ups and downs than Joan Rivers’ Face.”
And when Joan Rivers asked her which husband was the best lover, she smiled and answered, “Well, yours, darling.” Clock the vintage shade!
The segment that seemed the most satisfying for the crowd was when she focused on Dynasty. Of course, there was a catfight montage that did not make use of stunt doubles. And there were plenty of shots of her outfits with towering shoulder pads. “Sometimes, we had to walk through the door sideways… Those shoulder pads were more flattering than an Italian waiter!”
We all shared a good laugh when Joan stated, “Not to toot my own horn, but I was flawless onDynasty,” and followed up with a solid two minutes of bloopers.
After receiving another standing ovation at the conclusion of the show, she came back out (white wine in hand) and took questions from the audience, which is when we spotted Alan Cumming in the front row. Highlights included when a gentleman asked for her thoughts on why she has such a huge gay following: “Well, I believe it’s because gays have such great taste!” and when another asked whether Bette Davis taught her how to be a true bitch: “No. Anyone else?”
Daniel Nardicio, who produced the event, was in high spirits last night, telling us how excited he was to continue to offer more than just underwear parties to his following. “They like to get down and dirty, but they are cultured and smart and want more than just to talk about Madonna vs. Gaga. Zzzzzzzzzzz. So I am now offering that.”
It seems that Daniel’s famed Icon Series is not just confined to Fire Island anymore. He tipped us off to an exclusive tidbit of information: “I'm about to announce a Justin Vivian Bond/Carol Channing show in New York. It was such a huge hit on Fire Island why deprive Manhattan?”
Why indeed!
DIARY UPDATE : TAMARA BECKWITH ..DIARY OF A HECTIC BLONDE! NOVEMBER 5TH 2013..
Last in the book launch category, but by no means least, was one of my favourite icons ever, Joan Collins. I am far and away her biggest fan and she knows it! Having met her first with our mutual friend Terry O’Neill over 20 years ago, I just love her! She is a real fighter and hilariously funny. I could go on but it’s a bit much! We headed down the staircase at The Westbury Hotel for her book party (see what I mean?!) for “Passion for Life”, and literally bumped into Julian Clary and his partner Ian Mackley. Funnily enough Giorgio and I had just watched his Piers Morgan “Life Stories” the night before and I found myself being horribly gushy about how great his story had been.
Me with Valentino and Giancarlo Giacometti
Right behind us was the one and only Mario Testino, a fellow Peruvian for Percy! So far, so glamorous. The Fennels, Louise and Theo, two of her greatest friends were holding court, and chat show supremo Graham Norton was making a small group giggle. Cleo Rocos was her usual friendly, chatty self with extraordinary perky red hair. Joan looked sensational in black satin and twinkling diamonds. She was in fabulous form and I think beyond thrilled with the turnout. Her lovely son, the artistSacha Newley, was milling around and Valentino and Giancarlo were inundated with photo requests. I have now got a bedside table with the 3 books – forget about time to write them, when am I going to read them?!
Giorgio, Joan, me and Percy
PRESS UPDATE: FREIZEIT REVUE .. NOVEMBER 7TH 2013..
Joan features in the latest issue of FREIZEIT REVUE which is on sale tomorrow!
EVENT UPDATE.: ONE NIGHT WITH JOAN.. B.B.KINGS NEW YORK ..OCTOBER 5TH 2013..
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| Joan with Daniel Nardicio |
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| Joan signed a Cannon Mills poster |
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| Joan with Alan Cumming and Ana Mantronic who was MC |
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| Joan with Alan Cumming |
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| Joan with friends Nikki Haskell & Jack Rich |
PHOTO OF THE DAY : IT'S A SIBLING REUNION FOR JOAN!
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
PRESS UPDATE : THE CUT ..NOVEMBER 5TH 2013
Iman, Joan Collins, and Leandra Medine. Joan Collins, Iman Dominate the ACE Awards
At last night's 17th Annual Accessories Council ACE Awards, Joan Collins and her brunette beehive took the stage to present jeweler Alexis Bittar with the prize for Brand of the Year. "If you've ever seen Dynasty, you know that I appreciate accessories," she explained after extolling the virtues of Lucite and sparkles. Other award winners included Leandra Medine, Olivia Palermo, Stacy Keibler, Phillip Lim, Hamish Bowles, and the co-founders of Warby Parker, but the only one who rivaled Collins's diva-ness was Iman, whose puffy sleeves deserved a Hall of Fame award all to themselves.
EVENT UPDATE : ACE AWARDS 2013 ... CIPRIANI NEW YORK .. NOVEMBER 4 2013 ..
Joan attended the 17th Annual ACE Accessories Awards held in New York last night and presented an award to Alexis Bittar whom Joan featured in a highly successful ad campaign recently..
PHOTO OF THE DAY : SMOKING'S NOT SO DECADENT FOR JOAN!
Monday, November 4, 2013
PHOTO OF THE DAY : WHEN IT COMES TO PARTIES . JOAN''S GOT THEM COVERED!
PHOTO OF THE DAY EXTRA : JOAN'S HAS TO BE SEEN AND HEARD ON RADIO!
Sunday, November 3, 2013
PHOTO OF THE DATE : TERRY'S MIDWINTERS TALE MAKES JOAN LAUGH!
Saturday, November 2, 2013
PRESS UPDATE : INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY ... NOVEMBER 2RD 2013...
'How can you get into trouble for saying what is true?' Joan Collins talks man troubles, twerking and the problem with society today...
I meet Joan Collins in Claridge's, because, let's face it, where else do you meet this long-serving star of stage and screen and epitome of old Hollywood glamour, who has more recently branched out into books and one-woman shows and – wait for it – her own brand of wigs?
As I loiter in the lobby with my six-year-old daughter Lily, in Collins sweeps, looking sizzling in a leopard-print top and cream-coloured straw Stetson. She immediately leans down and shakes hands with Lily, and asks if she'd like to come and sit next to her and eat some ice-cream.
Collins and Claridge's go way back. She loves the hotel so much that she appeared in the recent BBC documentary series about it, and married her fifth husband, Percy, here in 2002. The staff flutter attentively and guide us to her usual table, tucked in a corner away from the gawpers.
Those who have met Collins tend to go on about how good she looks for her age – she turned 80 in May – and now I, too, can report that she does, up close, look sensational: all glittering eyes, burgundy lips and precipitous cheekbones. She's never had surgery as she's too phobic to go under the knife but she did once have Botox. "Never again," she says.
Lunch for Collins is a plate of sliced avocado and smoked salmon – she doesn't do bread, or the crème fraîche that comes on the side – and this, she tells me, is the secret of her youthful appearance.
"Avocados!" she cries. "You know, I really think I should do a commercial for avocados, as they are so good for the skin." Keeping trim requires effort, she says, "but I enjoy looking good. I mean, I exercise, but I'm no Jane Fonda. And I did very well in the genetic pool."
In the early 1990s, a few years after she'd retired from playing the dolled-up mega-bitch Alexis Carrington Colby on the TV series Dynasty (for which, at the time, she was the highest-paid woman on television), Collins complained to her agent Sue Mengers that she was swamped with requests to play identical parts. Mengers offered some advice. "She said, 'Oh Joanie, just let your hair go grey and get fat and then people will take you seriously.' Ha! Can you believe it? I told her to fuck off."
Collins is extremely good company, and uproariously funny. She tells me she makes a point of never speaking ill of her fellow performers, but through her Twitter account has made exceptions for Miley Cyrus – "I said, 'People who twerk look like a berk.' Well, they do!" – and the film actor Toby Stephens, whom she called "a cunt" for writing a newspaper article in which he recalled working as a student at a theatre where she was performing, and her "just wafting around the stage being Joan Collins".
In 1953 with her then husband Maxwell Reed and their pet monkey Spider (Getty Images)
Collins also dotes on young children (she has three grandchildren). This is just as well since, 20 minutes into our chat, she suddenly looks startled, fumbles around under the table and brings out a sticky, pink-splattered Chanel shoe. "I do believe dear Lily has dropped ice-cream in my shoe," she says. I babble my apologies but she doesn't mind a bit. "I'm used to it, darling," she tells Lily. "When I take [her youngest granddaughter] Ava Grace out in New York we have a foot-long hot dog and then a banana split. Have you ever had a banana split? No? You must!"
We discuss her various husbands and boyfriends, about whom she writes with eye- popping candour in her new book Passion for Life, which is brimful of pictures of Collins through the years. Along with Nicky Hilton, the American hotel heir – whom, we discover, liked to brag that he, his brother and his father had "a yard of cock" between them – she also details flings with Harry Belafonte (they kept it under wraps), Warren Beatty (who wore her out with the "endless bonking") and the property tycoon Bill Wiggins (who, to her disgust, subsequently sold a story to the papers which claimed that Collins was almost bald).
She also opens up about her marriages to the actor Maxwell Reed, who drugged and raped her on their first date; her fellow actor Anthony Newley, who was pathologically unfaithful; and the record-company impresario Ronald Kass, who developed cocaine and heroin addictions and left Collins in catastrophic debt.
Joan, I ask, are you about to get into trouble with your exes for spilling the beans? "I haven't so far," she replies airily. "And anyway, Bill Wiggins is going to love it; he adores publicity. But I thought very carefully about it; how can you get into trouble for saying what is true?"
In 1965 with Anthony Newley after the birth of their son Alexander
While Collins has made some dubious choices when it comes to men, what is clear from her account is that she is a relentless grafter who has kept herself and her children afloat through some seriously tough times, and has refused to become the meek housewife that several of her husbands wished her to become ("I have never been the mousy, stand-two-paces-behind, obedient 'little woman' type," she says in her book).
It seems to me, I say, that you are a feminist. "I think I probably am," she replies, "at least if it means when a woman is exactly equal to a man except physically. But wanting to cover oneself in jewels or couture or make-up and cherish being a woman, I don't think there's anything wrong with that either. We should celebrate being women and having the opportunities to do things that our mothers and grandmothers were not allowed to do. They were expected to stay at home and do the cooking and the cleaning. Though of course now we're expected to do the cooking and the cleaning and the working."
She is appalled at the pressures on young women today to have to look a certain way – "and I understand young men today don't expect women to have body hair anywhere. Even" – she points south – "down there. Ridiculous! Young women have been given an expectation of Barbie-doll beauty that doesn't exist in real life."
Collins also writes for the first time about her current husband, the theatre producer Percy Gibson, whom she remains dotty about. The couple met when she was performing in the AR Gurney two-hander Love Letters in the US in 2001. As was widely remarked upon when they announced their engagement, Percy is 32 years her junior. "If he dies, he dies," Collins quipped at the time.
Five husbands in, she still rates marriage very highly. "It is," she explains, "the definitive commitment – says she who has been married five times! But I do think it's very important, if you're going to spend the rest of your life with somebody, to know that you really like them. Because when the pheromones wear off, which of course they will, you have to have a strong basis. Tell me, Fiona, do you have that with your husband?"
We can just about stand to be in the same room, I say.
"Well, there you go," she smiles. "Friendship is the key. What a shame it took me so long to work that out!"
In 1974 with her third husband Ron Kass (Getty Images)
Born in 1933, Collins is the daughter of a theatre-agent father and a mother who was a champion ballroom dancer before she gave it all up to be a housewife. Her grandmother had been a dancer and actress in the early 20th century. When Joan was five, her grandmother hitched up her skirts in the family living-room and showed her granddaughter how to do the splits. (Joan copied her and, with a bit of limbering up, can still do them now.)
Collins' father encouraged her to pursue acting and told her: "Don't ever ask or depend on anyone for anything." He also warned: "You better make all the money you can when you're young because by the time you're 23, you'll be all washed up." Happily, she would put him right on that one.
Collins' first paid work arrived when she was 16 and a student at Rada. "A photographer came in and wanted to see 10 of what were considered to be the prettiest girls in the school. We all lined up in front of him; he chose a couple of us and one of them was me. I went the following week to a freezing studio and they made me put on a blue bathing suit and lie on a cold floor with fake sand and took a picture of me for the cover k of a magazine called Good Taste. I looked like a drowned rat. I think I got paid 30 shillings."
She was soon picked up by the J Arthur Rank Film Company, which billed her as the British Elizabeth Taylor. She would go on to star in a succession of films that veered from the not-bad (1956's The Opposite Sex) to the so-bad-it's-good (1977's Empire of the Ants, now deemed a cult classic).
Her career had tremendous peaks and troughs, and it was a particularly grim trough in the 1970s that prompted her to take the lead in the soft-porn film of her sister Jackie Collins' book The Stud (1978). The similarly raunchy The Bitch followed the next year, after which Collins' career was firmly back on track and she landed the role of a lifetime in Dynasty, in 1981.
In 1986 with her fourth husband Peter Holm (PA)
Over the past 20 years, Collins has expanded beyond acting and become quite the entrepreneur. Since the early 1990s she has churned out scores of books, from memoirs to novels to beauty guides and, most controversially, an irritable manifesto on the modern world published last year.
The World According to Joan caused a particular stir since, along with providing assorted beauty tips, it castigated feckless parents, spoilt children, yob culture, the death of chivalry and the obese (whom she called "Jello warriors" from "Planet Girth"). "Yes, it did cause a bit of a fuss but I also had an enormous number of people write to say, 'Oh my God, that's exactly how I feel but I've been scared to say it.' The leftie newspapers weren't so impressed. Haha!"
In her 1980s heyday, Collins was a well-known defender of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. When she attended Thatcher's funeral, she was furious to see protesters outside. Would she still describe herself as right-wing? "I wouldn't say right-wing, no," she says cautiously. "I'm more a middle-of-the-roader. Percy had a good expression for it. I'm a humanist."
When I ask her her views on the current government, she looks pained and says, "Oh please, don't get me on politics. I'm always being told that I'm blunt and opinionated and I talk too much. Someone once said to me, 'Actresses shouldn't talk about politics, they're not politicians,' and I think they're right. But I'll say this: I think they're doing the best that they can."
2013: With Percy Gibson (married since 2002) at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher (AFP/Getty Images)
Along with the books, there have been TV cameos, her touring one-woman show called An Evening with Joan Collins and adverts for everything from cosmetics to chocolate bars. She has just completed voice-over work on a children's movie, Saving Santa, alongside Martin Freeman, which is due for release this Christmas. And now her latest wheeze: wigs.
"I have designed my own collection and they are fabulous," Collins beams. "It was Percy's idea. All of them are named after someone very important in my life, whether it's a fictional character or my family or friends. Each has a name that is meaningful. The redhead is Arlene, after my dear friend [the actress] Arlene Dahl."
It's these various money-making schemes, combined with her relentless energy, that allows Collins to maintain homes in London, Los Angeles, New York and the south of France.
She insists that, at 80, there's no chance of her slowing down and taking life easy. Yet her favourite place in the world, she tells me, is her house in a small village just outside Saint-Tropez. "It's my bolthole, a place to go after the insanity of going from country to country. Percy and I will go for lunch and to dinner or just sit on the beach. Sometimes I'll stay there for 10 days at a time and I just don't go out." For a moment, Collins comes over all misty-eyed. "For me, the best thing in the world is just to sit there and look at the view."
'Passion for Life' by Joan Collins is published by Constable, priced £25
Collins and Claridge's go way back. She loves the hotel so much that she appeared in the recent BBC documentary series about it, and married her fifth husband, Percy, here in 2002. The staff flutter attentively and guide us to her usual table, tucked in a corner away from the gawpers.
Those who have met Collins tend to go on about how good she looks for her age – she turned 80 in May – and now I, too, can report that she does, up close, look sensational: all glittering eyes, burgundy lips and precipitous cheekbones. She's never had surgery as she's too phobic to go under the knife but she did once have Botox. "Never again," she says.
Lunch for Collins is a plate of sliced avocado and smoked salmon – she doesn't do bread, or the crème fraîche that comes on the side – and this, she tells me, is the secret of her youthful appearance.
"Avocados!" she cries. "You know, I really think I should do a commercial for avocados, as they are so good for the skin." Keeping trim requires effort, she says, "but I enjoy looking good. I mean, I exercise, but I'm no Jane Fonda. And I did very well in the genetic pool."
In the early 1990s, a few years after she'd retired from playing the dolled-up mega-bitch Alexis Carrington Colby on the TV series Dynasty (for which, at the time, she was the highest-paid woman on television), Collins complained to her agent Sue Mengers that she was swamped with requests to play identical parts. Mengers offered some advice. "She said, 'Oh Joanie, just let your hair go grey and get fat and then people will take you seriously.' Ha! Can you believe it? I told her to fuck off."
Collins is extremely good company, and uproariously funny. She tells me she makes a point of never speaking ill of her fellow performers, but through her Twitter account has made exceptions for Miley Cyrus – "I said, 'People who twerk look like a berk.' Well, they do!" – and the film actor Toby Stephens, whom she called "a cunt" for writing a newspaper article in which he recalled working as a student at a theatre where she was performing, and her "just wafting around the stage being Joan Collins".
In 1953 with her then husband Maxwell Reed and their pet monkey Spider (Getty Images) Collins also dotes on young children (she has three grandchildren). This is just as well since, 20 minutes into our chat, she suddenly looks startled, fumbles around under the table and brings out a sticky, pink-splattered Chanel shoe. "I do believe dear Lily has dropped ice-cream in my shoe," she says. I babble my apologies but she doesn't mind a bit. "I'm used to it, darling," she tells Lily. "When I take [her youngest granddaughter] Ava Grace out in New York we have a foot-long hot dog and then a banana split. Have you ever had a banana split? No? You must!"
We discuss her various husbands and boyfriends, about whom she writes with eye- popping candour in her new book Passion for Life, which is brimful of pictures of Collins through the years. Along with Nicky Hilton, the American hotel heir – whom, we discover, liked to brag that he, his brother and his father had "a yard of cock" between them – she also details flings with Harry Belafonte (they kept it under wraps), Warren Beatty (who wore her out with the "endless bonking") and the property tycoon Bill Wiggins (who, to her disgust, subsequently sold a story to the papers which claimed that Collins was almost bald).
She also opens up about her marriages to the actor Maxwell Reed, who drugged and raped her on their first date; her fellow actor Anthony Newley, who was pathologically unfaithful; and the record-company impresario Ronald Kass, who developed cocaine and heroin addictions and left Collins in catastrophic debt.
Joan, I ask, are you about to get into trouble with your exes for spilling the beans? "I haven't so far," she replies airily. "And anyway, Bill Wiggins is going to love it; he adores publicity. But I thought very carefully about it; how can you get into trouble for saying what is true?"
In 1965 with Anthony Newley after the birth of their son Alexander While Collins has made some dubious choices when it comes to men, what is clear from her account is that she is a relentless grafter who has kept herself and her children afloat through some seriously tough times, and has refused to become the meek housewife that several of her husbands wished her to become ("I have never been the mousy, stand-two-paces-behind, obedient 'little woman' type," she says in her book).
It seems to me, I say, that you are a feminist. "I think I probably am," she replies, "at least if it means when a woman is exactly equal to a man except physically. But wanting to cover oneself in jewels or couture or make-up and cherish being a woman, I don't think there's anything wrong with that either. We should celebrate being women and having the opportunities to do things that our mothers and grandmothers were not allowed to do. They were expected to stay at home and do the cooking and the cleaning. Though of course now we're expected to do the cooking and the cleaning and the working."
She is appalled at the pressures on young women today to have to look a certain way – "and I understand young men today don't expect women to have body hair anywhere. Even" – she points south – "down there. Ridiculous! Young women have been given an expectation of Barbie-doll beauty that doesn't exist in real life."
Collins also writes for the first time about her current husband, the theatre producer Percy Gibson, whom she remains dotty about. The couple met when she was performing in the AR Gurney two-hander Love Letters in the US in 2001. As was widely remarked upon when they announced their engagement, Percy is 32 years her junior. "If he dies, he dies," Collins quipped at the time.
Five husbands in, she still rates marriage very highly. "It is," she explains, "the definitive commitment – says she who has been married five times! But I do think it's very important, if you're going to spend the rest of your life with somebody, to know that you really like them. Because when the pheromones wear off, which of course they will, you have to have a strong basis. Tell me, Fiona, do you have that with your husband?"
We can just about stand to be in the same room, I say.
"Well, there you go," she smiles. "Friendship is the key. What a shame it took me so long to work that out!"
In 1974 with her third husband Ron Kass (Getty Images) Born in 1933, Collins is the daughter of a theatre-agent father and a mother who was a champion ballroom dancer before she gave it all up to be a housewife. Her grandmother had been a dancer and actress in the early 20th century. When Joan was five, her grandmother hitched up her skirts in the family living-room and showed her granddaughter how to do the splits. (Joan copied her and, with a bit of limbering up, can still do them now.)
Collins' father encouraged her to pursue acting and told her: "Don't ever ask or depend on anyone for anything." He also warned: "You better make all the money you can when you're young because by the time you're 23, you'll be all washed up." Happily, she would put him right on that one.
Collins' first paid work arrived when she was 16 and a student at Rada. "A photographer came in and wanted to see 10 of what were considered to be the prettiest girls in the school. We all lined up in front of him; he chose a couple of us and one of them was me. I went the following week to a freezing studio and they made me put on a blue bathing suit and lie on a cold floor with fake sand and took a picture of me for the cover k of a magazine called Good Taste. I looked like a drowned rat. I think I got paid 30 shillings."
She was soon picked up by the J Arthur Rank Film Company, which billed her as the British Elizabeth Taylor. She would go on to star in a succession of films that veered from the not-bad (1956's The Opposite Sex) to the so-bad-it's-good (1977's Empire of the Ants, now deemed a cult classic).
Her career had tremendous peaks and troughs, and it was a particularly grim trough in the 1970s that prompted her to take the lead in the soft-porn film of her sister Jackie Collins' book The Stud (1978). The similarly raunchy The Bitch followed the next year, after which Collins' career was firmly back on track and she landed the role of a lifetime in Dynasty, in 1981.
In 1986 with her fourth husband Peter Holm (PA) Over the past 20 years, Collins has expanded beyond acting and become quite the entrepreneur. Since the early 1990s she has churned out scores of books, from memoirs to novels to beauty guides and, most controversially, an irritable manifesto on the modern world published last year.
The World According to Joan caused a particular stir since, along with providing assorted beauty tips, it castigated feckless parents, spoilt children, yob culture, the death of chivalry and the obese (whom she called "Jello warriors" from "Planet Girth"). "Yes, it did cause a bit of a fuss but I also had an enormous number of people write to say, 'Oh my God, that's exactly how I feel but I've been scared to say it.' The leftie newspapers weren't so impressed. Haha!"
In her 1980s heyday, Collins was a well-known defender of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. When she attended Thatcher's funeral, she was furious to see protesters outside. Would she still describe herself as right-wing? "I wouldn't say right-wing, no," she says cautiously. "I'm more a middle-of-the-roader. Percy had a good expression for it. I'm a humanist."
When I ask her her views on the current government, she looks pained and says, "Oh please, don't get me on politics. I'm always being told that I'm blunt and opinionated and I talk too much. Someone once said to me, 'Actresses shouldn't talk about politics, they're not politicians,' and I think they're right. But I'll say this: I think they're doing the best that they can."
2013: With Percy Gibson (married since 2002) at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher (AFP/Getty Images) Along with the books, there have been TV cameos, her touring one-woman show called An Evening with Joan Collins and adverts for everything from cosmetics to chocolate bars. She has just completed voice-over work on a children's movie, Saving Santa, alongside Martin Freeman, which is due for release this Christmas. And now her latest wheeze: wigs.
"I have designed my own collection and they are fabulous," Collins beams. "It was Percy's idea. All of them are named after someone very important in my life, whether it's a fictional character or my family or friends. Each has a name that is meaningful. The redhead is Arlene, after my dear friend [the actress] Arlene Dahl."
It's these various money-making schemes, combined with her relentless energy, that allows Collins to maintain homes in London, Los Angeles, New York and the south of France.
She insists that, at 80, there's no chance of her slowing down and taking life easy. Yet her favourite place in the world, she tells me, is her house in a small village just outside Saint-Tropez. "It's my bolthole, a place to go after the insanity of going from country to country. Percy and I will go for lunch and to dinner or just sit on the beach. Sometimes I'll stay there for 10 days at a time and I just don't go out." For a moment, Collins comes over all misty-eyed. "For me, the best thing in the world is just to sit there and look at the view."
'Passion for Life' by Joan Collins is published by Constable, priced £25
PHOTO OF THE DAY : JOAN'S GOT HER PAST PERFECTLY COVERED!
Friday, November 1, 2013
TV UPDATE : QVC .. FRIDAY NOVEMBER 1ST 2013 ..
Joan looked sensational as ever as she dropped into the QVC studios to promote her new bestseller 'Passion For Life'.. Here is Joan with QVC presenter Marverine Cole.. TV UPDATE : QVC UK ..FRIDAY 1ST NOVEMBER 2013 ..
Joan dropped into the QVC studios earlier to appear on The Morning Show with Jackie Kabler to promote her sensational new memoir 'Passion For Life'.. Viewers can also purchase copies from QVC at.http://www.qvcuk.com/Joan-Collins-Passion-For-Life-Hardback-Book.product.703062.html?sc=703062-SRCH&cm_sp=VIEWPOSITION-_-1-_-703062
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| Joan on air with presenter Jackie Kabler |
TV ALERT .... CHATTY MAN .. C4 .. FRIDAY 1ST NOVEMBER 2013
Don't forget to tune into tonight's edition of 'Chatty Man' with Alan Carr on C4 at 10.00pm to catch Joan's interview. Here is an exclusive shot on set with Joan and Alan...
PHOTO OF THE DAY : WHERE THERES A WILL.. THERE'S A GRACE WITH JOAN!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
PHOTO OF THE DAY : JOAN'S THE STAR OF THE HOUR!
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
TV ALERT : ALAN CARR'S CHATTY MAN. C4 . FRIDAY 1ST NOVEMBER 2013
Joan recorded her segment for this Friday's edition of 'Chatty Man' with Alan Carr earlier.. Here is an exclusive shot of Joan on set. Tune in to Channel 4 this Friday at 10.00pm to catch the interview..
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