Ninety years, five husbands (the current one is 32 years younger), three children, three grandchildren, seven decades in show business, lovers like Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Ryan O'Neal or Warren Beatty give a lot, a lot of juice . Oh, and without forgetting the role of the narcissistic and Machiavellian Alexis Colby in the series Dynasty
Joan Collins tells things that have already been told and others that have not, things that are known or simply imagined, in her new memoir, Behind the Shoulder Pads, which is published today in the United Kingdom. The actress, writer, producer, columnist and businesswoman simply does not know how to be still, or silent. The only thing she doesn't want to talk about is her age. “I refuse to identify with a specific age group,” she notes with characteristic sarcasm.
The book is billed as the stories Collins tells his friends, the way he tells them to friends, which means there are necessarily a lot of biographical elements. Daughter of a South African film agent who had Shirley Bassey, Roger Moore and even briefly the Beatles as clients, at the age of 18 she was chosen “the most beautiful girl in England” by the Photographers Association. “It wasn't that big of a deal,” her parent commented, a phrase that still hurts her.
She studied at the prestigious RADA academy and seemed destined for theatre. It was the time of her admiration for French existentialism and Juliette Greco. “He overflowed with innocence,” he says. At that time there was no sexual education and we did not know the average mass.” But cinema got in her way when Twentieth Century Fox thought they saw in her the new Elizabeth Taylor ("Joseph Mankiewicz promised me the role of Cleopatra, but when push came to shove he gave it to Liz").
The actress has never wanted to feel or be seen as a victim. She lost her virginity to actor Maxwell Reed, who she says raped her after putting a chemical substance in Coca-Cola, but made him her first husband. “I was raised in a way,” she says, “that if you wanted to have sex you got married, period.”
Collins is outgoing, as she demonstrates in her memoirs and in the interviews she gives. She does not hide her position in “the war of the Windsors” (Catherine loves her but Meghan is not a saint of her devotion), she emotionally remembers her meetings with Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana, and she was once a supporter of Brexit but now she is not He sees it so clearly (his cosmetics line has suffered as a consequence of the new trade obstacles with the European Union, and business is business). She speaks sadly of the losses of her mother (she died at 52) and her sister Jackie, a successful writer of best-selling romance books.
The book is an account of the golden age of Hollywood and is full of anecdotes. She explains how at twenty-six years old Warren Beatty got her pregnant and insisted on an abortion (she said it would have ruined our careers otherwise, and I think she was right). When he met Marilyn Monroe, the blonde star warned him that the world of cinema was “full of wolves” who only gave roles to pretty girls if they slept with them. She didn't know whether to believe it, but a few days later a great executive from Twentieth Century Fox cornered her against the wall, and by a miracle she was able to escape from it.
He has never mince words. She admits that she likes Helen Mirrerreb and Judi Dench, two other classics of the British stage and cinema, younger than her. And she, on the other hand, can't stand Ben Kingsley. “In fact, I don't know anyone in the union who supports it. He insists on everyone calling him Sir, no exceptions, it's pretty amazing.” Personally and professionally he has made conflicting decisions, but he does not regret anything. She is a born survivor. She has been criticized for posing nude for Playboy magazine, but if she is asked why she did it, she has the answer: “They offered me a hundred thousand dollars, and a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money then, baby.”
She admits that her choices of lovers and husbands have not been successful in most cases, although they were all attractive. But she believes she has more than made up for her past mistakes with Percy Gibson, her current husband, 58, to whom she has already been married for a couple of decades. “He is wonderful, a charm, I have nothing but good things to say about him, a perfect companion. And I hope I'm still sane for a while!” She knows that she has been marked by her role as the bad guy in Dynasty. “A real bitch, nothing else can be said. But I'm not. At least, not so much…”
