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THE WORLD OF

Legendary screen star Dame Joan Collins tells Declan Harte about beauty secrets, Hollywood ‘wolves’, and her love of

all things British in this exclusive interview

J O A N

INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

howbiz legend Dame Joan Collins is still inspiring us all, with her glamorous grace, steely determination and razor-sharp wit. The stylish national treasure is about to share secrets from her

long career in the spotlight, spanning more than seven decades, and says she can’t wait for the national tour of her one-woman show, Joan Collins Unscripted, to start.

American soap-opera Dynasty made her a huge global star in the 1980s, putting Joan’s scheming Alexis Carrington Colby character firmly in the history books as one of TV’s greatest villains. She was queen of the withering put-down and the no-nonsense Dame Joan talks an equally good game. The photogenic star still looks fantastic and nowhere near her actual age of 85, with fans eager to know how she seemingly stopped the clock. The Joan Collins Unscripted tour will let audiences quiz the screen icon (who’ll model a number of glimmering designer gowns onstage) directly in the show’s Q&A section.

Everyone wants to know what the apparently ageless global star’s beauty secrets are. “I know they do, which is why I’m going to be writing a book about it,” she told me, in her unmistakable cut-glass English accent. “We haven’t quite got the title yet, but everyone asks me about that and we’ve decided that it’s maybe time to write a book and put all my secrets in it.”

But ahead of the book’s release, she’s been kind enough to share a few diet and exercise tips for looking and feeling great at any age with Prime readers.

“Not overeating, pushing yourself away from the table before you’ve finished all your food, getting enough sleep. getting a certain amount of exercise, not too much, I don’t believe in that ‘no pain, no gain’ thing.” she said. “Basically, try to lead a happy life, as much as one can these days.”

The London-born actress trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), before landing in Hollywood in the 1950s, rubbing shoulders with such stars as Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe and Warren Beatty. Dame Joan told me Marilyn gave her some important advice about predatory men when she first touched down in Tinseltown. “Marilyn Monroe just said: ‘Beware of the wolves in Hollywood’. I said ‘I can handle wolves because we have them in England as well’. My father also gave me some good advice, he said to be strong, be resilient, be able to take rejection because it’s very, very competitive.”

As a young starlet in the Golden Age of Hollywood, she took the lead in 1955’s The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing and fronted epic film Land of the Pharaohs, which was shot on location in Egypt with a huge budget. She also appeared opposite Gregory Peck in 1958 western The Bravados, before teaming up with Bing Crosby in musical comedy The Road to Hong Kong.

This was an unforgiving time for young actresses and with her Hollywood stock fading somewhat, she spent much of the 1970s as a “scream queen” in British horror films, such as 1972’s Fear in the Night and the flowing year’s Dark Places. Working with UK film studio Hammer Horror, she starred opposite such genre legends as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and she returns to the world of screen scares this

year, appearing in American Horror Story on Netflix. After her headline-grabbing turn in racy 1978 picture The Stud, based on a book by her sister Jackie Collins, a major comeback was just around the corner. Dynasty, which focused on super-rich families warring to control the US oil industry, was a worldwide smash, eclipsing rival-soap Dallas. Inspirational Dame Joan Collins is a global style icon, just as fabulous off-screen as she is on, and her reputation in the world of fashion suggests she had a say in the era-defining outfits of Alexis.

“Oh I had a lot of say,” Joan told me. “At first they wanted me to be in like little cheap suits with, you know, Peter Pan collars and I said that wasn’t at all what she was. This woman is an empowered and powerful woman, before it was popular to be so. I wanted a style that was very haute couture, very much in the Parisian way and wear hats and high heels.”

Big shoulder pads were the must-have sartorial choice for powerful and power-hungry females in the 1980s and as Alexis, Joan Collins led the charge. She said she designed the outfits with costume-creator Nolan Miller, who’d previously worked on Charlie’s Angels, adding: “I did a lot with Nolan Miller and helped because I wanted to be a designer when I was a child. I still design a lot of my clothes.”

The Joan Collins Unscripted tour will be a treat for the star’s many adoring fans and her fifth husband, theatre-producer Percy Gibson, will assist in the performances. She describes Percy, who’s more than 30 years her junior, as “an amazing man” and when they wed in 2002, she was asked if the age gap worried her. Quick as a flash, she memorably replied, “If he dies, he dies”. Previous husbands include Irish actor Maxwell Reed, award-winning musician Anthony Newly, American businessman Ron Kass and Swedish singer Peter Holm.

Her bestselling novelist sister Jackie Collins died in 2015, after seven years of keeping her cancer diagnosis a secret,

even from Joan. The siblings were famously close and the actress has even published six of her own novels, starting with Prime Time in 1988, while her bestselling non-fiction books include The World According to Joan. Dame Joan has three children and three grandchildren, while her 13 godchildren (including supermodel Cara Delevingne) complete her personal dynasty.

The upcoming nine-date tour, which will run from February 15-27, will call at venues in Basingstoke, Southend, London, Worthing, Salisbury, the Wirral, Buxton, York and Newcastle. “I think you can expect the unexpected, frankly,” she said. “It’s never the same and we do different things. Percy is on stage with me and he kind of monitors it. We tell jokes and talk to the audience and we have a lot of film and home movies and clips. Basically, it’s going to be jolly good fun.” The Dame plans to show clips of the amazing people she’s worked with down the years: Bette Davis, Richard Burton, Gene Kelly… the list goes on. This is not her first such show, but while the previous ones were scripted, this promises to be more loose and conversational and I discovered she’s always got lots to say.

After appearing in more than 30 films and countless TV shows, what

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MY FATHER ALSO GAVE ME SOME GOOD ADVICE, HE SAID TO BE STRONG, BE RESILIENT, BE ABLE TO TAKE REJECTION BECAUSE

IT’S VERY, VERY COMPETITIVE

Joan Collins at the Theatre Royal in Brighton in 1980

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INTERVIEW

advice would she give a young actress starting out now? “Study and work hard,” she said, with the assured tone of a seasoned veteran. “You should study all the great actors, it’s very easy to do for young actors today. Get the old movies up and study Spencer Tracy and Marlon Brando and Paul Newman, all the great actors and learn from that.”

Today, A-list Hollywood stars like Emma Watson and Natalie Portman are outspoken about female actors being paid less than their male counterparts, but Joan fought for this on the set of Dynasty in the 1980s.

Dame Joan was incensed to learn that the man who played her character’s nemeses, Blake Carrington, had it in writing that no woman could earn more than him. “John Forsyth, the actor, had it in his contract that he had to get more money than any of the women in the show and I thought that was quite wrong but I never managed to overturn that actually,” she said.

Her hard work and sharp business nous clearly paid off and today she’s a household name admired by multiple generations. Modern audiences may know her from recent TV hit The Royals, where she starred as the mother of Liz Hurley’s fictional Queen, or as the outspoken resort manager, Crystal Hennessy-Vass, from comedy series Benidorm. The inspiring star has found time to support various good causes and in 2015 was made a Dame for services to charity at Buckingham Palace.

“Well it was very thrilling. First I got an OBE that was given to me by the Queen in 1998, then Prince Charles gave me the Damehood,” Joan

TOP SCREEN ROLES OF DAME JOAN

THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING (1955)In the star’s first Hollywood hit, a glamorous model is embroiled in a web of murder and deception. The lead role was originally intended for Marilyn Monroe, but she was deemed too old and it instead went to new-face Joan Collins. LAND OF THE PHARAOHS (1956)Set amid the building of Egypt’s Great Pyramid, Joan stars as Nellifer, wife of Pharaoh Khufu. The extravagant production was typical of big-budget Hollywood epics of the time and thousands of extras were used. DARK PLACES (1974)Appearing opposite horror-icon Christopher Lee, Joan’s character must escape the clutches of the deranged Dr Mandeville in the chilling film. The gruesome picture, set in a haunted house, has a strong cult following. THE STUD (1978)This highly-charged and salacious romp was a major comeback for Joan, based on a book by sister Jackie. The exploits of Joan’s character Fontaine Khaled shocked some, but audiences wanted more and a sequel, The Bitch, followed. DYNASTY (1981-1989)In this decade-defining US soap, Joan was born to play her character, the stylish and scheming Alexis Carrington Colby. As well as making her a household name, it led to a string of advertisements where she’d play up to the ‘diva’ persona. THE ROYALS (2015-2018)Making the switch from real-life Dame to fictional Queen Mother, Joan stars as Grand Duchess Alexandra of Oxford. The light-hearted comedy makes perfect use of her received pronunciation and impeccable timing. AMERICAN HORROR STORY (2019)Frightful British horror films of the sixties and seventies prepared Dame Joan for her role in this supernatural series. Its current season, Apocalypse, is set after a nuclear blast and she plays clairvoyant cult-member Bubbles McGee.

said. “I was beyond thrilled, it’s the biggest honour that a civilian can be given in this country. It’s great, I love being called Dame Joan. But in America they don’t know what it means, so I never get called Dame Joan there.”

In the US she has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but insists she would never compare that to the honour of a Damehood. As she travels the globe her heart, clearly, remains in Britain. “I like LA and I just spent seven months there doing American Horror Story. I’m very bi-coastal, I first went to LA when I was 20, so it’s like a second home, but England is my home and always will be.”

Finally, I ask if she’ll ever retire and her response could not be more Joan Collins. “Well no, I can’t actually. You retire, you die, it’s been proven. I love what I do, I love acting, I love writing, I love travelling, I love my family, I love my friends. I have a very good outlook on life, darling.”

To book tickets for Joan Collins Unscripted, visit the website.

Joan Collins as Helen in The Time Of Their Lives

PA Photo/Organic Publicity

seetickets.com/tour/joan-collins

Below: 1978 Joan Collins book signing