Queen’s Jubilee: Joan Collins shares ‘fondest memory’ of Queen
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In a new interview, the irrepressible Dynasty legend and veteran of more than 70 films also says she does not notice the 33-year age gap between herself and fifth husband Percy Gibson, 56, with whom she has just celebrated their 20th anniversary.
“I think what is important is not age, but how you look, feel and behave,” the British star tells the September issue of Saga magazine, which is out on Tuesday, In fact, she believes it to be “tremendously rude” to ask a woman her age – or even discuss it.
“My mother’s generation never did it,” she adds. “But you know, people have been calling me an older woman since I was 38!”
Dame Joan, who is also celebrating the publication of her 17th book – My Unapologetic Diaries – says her secret to looking good, aside from eating well and exercising regularly, is simply “having great parents who gave me good genes”.
She also does not smoke, has managed to avoid drugs and excessive drinking during her Hollywood heyday, and moisturises “all the time”. “I never put my face in the sun. I only allow my body and legs to tan,” she adds.
Dame Joan has just finished filming a 10-episode medieval drama series opposite Jane Seymour called Glow and Darkness and will also return to cinema screens later this year in a movie adaptation of the stage musical Tomorrow Morning.
Having long battled against the “ageist attitudes” of film and TV studios, she believes the tide is now turning, with older women increasingly being cast in lead roles.
She says: “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 look at people who are older.”
And she adds modestly: “Look at Helen Mirren and Judi Dench – they are far more popular than me.”
As well as ignoring the advancing years, the self-confessed “old school” Hollywood star has no plans to retire anytime soon to the homes she and Percy share in St Tropez, Beverly Hills and Belgravia in West London.
She says: “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.”
The mother of three grown-up children from previous marriages and four grandchildren admits her hardest real-life role was combining being a single parent in between husbands with a demanding career that hit the stratosphere when she was cast as scheming, power-hungry Alexis Carrington in 1980s US supersoap Dynasty.
“My children mean so much to me,” she says, “but it was very hard. People enjoy this fantasy that I am a super-bitch because of Alexis, but 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.”
Long before the #MeToo era, Dame Joan says she was subjected to unwanted advances from several studio bigwigs, including one producer she was horrified to find lying naked in the bath after he summoned her to his New York hotel room to discuss a film part.
“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.
Although she hated her developing curves as a teenager and considered herself a tomboy – a notion that changed, she says, “when boys discovered me” – her striking beauty as a young starlet caught the eye of many A-list icons.
In her book, she reveals that she turned down Dean Martin, Richard Burton, US Senator Bobby Kennedy and Ol’ Blue Eyes himself Frank Sinatra, who invited her to fly with him to Hamburg for a dinner date – which she rejected because of his notoriety for “one-night stands.”
She did, however, fall for Warren Beatty after they met at an LA party in 1959. They became engaged the following year when she fell pregnant but she felt it too early to start a family.
They eventually split after an 18-month romance because she found him too manipulative – “He made me turn down several movies” – and demanding in bed. “His need for sex several times a day wore me out,” she says.
Dame Joan now describes fifth hubby Percy as “the love of my life”.
“It’s a great marriage, a great relationship,” she says. 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 don’t have two bathrooms.”
She also tearfully discusses the death of her author sister Jackie in 2015 aged 77. Just months before she died, Joan was made a Dame and was thrilled this June to take part in the Jubilee Pageant to celebrate The Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
“She’s a wonderful woman,” Dame Joan declares. “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.”
Fans will soon be able to see Dame Joan playing Her Majesty’s somewhat less popular late aunt-in-law Wallis Simpson, whose love for King Edward VIII sparked a royal scandal and led to his abdication.
She is to star in In Bed with the Duchess, a film written by her friend Louise Fennell. She says: “I play the Duchess of Windsor from the time that the Duke died right up until her death. It’s a fabulous story.”
● Saga magazine is out on Tuesday.
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