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'Sex scenes? I had to get really plastered beforehand!' In a blisteringly candid interview, DAME JOAN COLLINS describes her career in the age MeToo forgot, how she still loves to get squiffy - and her fury that she doesn't get a State pension
How complicated sex scenes are these days. They are, rightly, all about consent and comfort for the actors but must still fulfil the vision of the director — hence the presence of the ‘intimacy co-ordinator’ on set.
It makes you wonder how movie stars got through them back in the day. Step forward Dame Joan Collins, no less, to clear that one up.
‘It’s hard to work that up, you know. I mean I did it in The Stud, but I had to get so drunk! We all did,’ she says. ‘There was an orgy scene and Oliver Tobias, Sue Lloyd, Mark Burns and I got really plastered beforehand.
‘It was the same with an Italian film which, thank God, no one has ever seen, where I had [a] love-making scene and the director gave me and the actor a bottle of rum and said, “Enjoy, and come on set in an hour”.’
Who knew that Dame Joan, unfazed by anything (you’d imagine), found sex scenes difficult? She says she would hate to have to do them today, when everything is ‘so explicit’.
Reflecting on her long career, Joan Collins says her 'contract came to an end when I was 27, because that was considered the point at which a woman was past her prime...’
Dame Joan Collins poses with her new £25 martini from Marks & Spencer at Home House members club in London
‘Maybe some actors can express extreme passion. It’s a hard thing to do unless you feel it. I don’t think I could do that today — not at my age anyway.’
Does anyone still ask? ‘No! There comes a time...’ Yes, civilisation might fall if she did, and it almost seemed to when she last stripped off — for Playboy, at the tender age of 49. It was deemed most unseemly.
‘And now look where we are!’ she agrees, reflecting on the longevity of today’s sex-symbol actresses. ‘You have Jennifer Lopez at, what, 55? [54, actually, but who’s counting?] And Demi Moore is prancing around at 60 [61, Joan!] looking fabulous.
‘There is no barrier now, or at least not the same sort of barrier. My contract at 20th Century Fox came to an end when I was 27, because that was considered the point at which a woman was past her prime. That’s when I settled down and had babies and I thought, “Right, had it now”, and retired.’
1978's The Stud, which Joan Collins starred in opposite Oliver Tobias, that contained sex scenes. 'I got really plastered beforehand,' she says
Joan Collins in a racy scene in The Bitch, a sequel to The Stud and released the following year
One of the sex scenes included in 1978 film The Stud, which Joan Collins says she got 'plastered' before filming
Only for a smidgeon, though.
Being Joan Collins, she was back. The astonishing thing about her — although there are many — is that she still hasn’t retired. Nor is she drawing her state pension, I discover, but this is not a choice.
‘I get not a penny from the Government. They refused to give me a pension when I came back from America 30-odd years ago. I’d been paying into National Insurance so I thought, “Maybe I can have a pension” because I wasn’t working. I felt I had a right to it. But they couldn’t find me! They had lost all the paperwork, or whatever it was.
‘They couldn’t find Joan Collins, Actress, therefore I didn’t exist in terms of getting a pension. So I don’t get a pension.’
Blimey. Surely not being able to find Joan Collins, Actress, is a scandal in itself? And yes, she does mind, even while acknowledging that many will wonder how with homes in LA, France and London’s Belgravia, she can have the gall to complain about missing out on that £221 a week. It’s the principle, she says. Also, every penny counts.
‘I know incredibly rich people who are getting it, and they say it helps because things are expensive.’
Besides, she’s not as silly-rich as people think. ‘It would be lovely if I was like those people from Dallas, or Friends who get residuals [payments for re-runs], I don’t. None of us from Dynasty do.
‘People do say, “She must be so rich”, but Dynasty finished 35 years ago. And yes I am still working — not hugely, but enough.’
She is also still working because it’s what Joan Collins, Actress, does. Even if they backdated her pension payments for 30 years, wouldn’t she still work?
‘I don’t want to retire,’ she nods. ‘I see what happens to people when they retire. They crumble because they don’t have any impetus. They don’t have anything that makes them want to get up in the morning, and you know, lying in bed and watching daytime TV is very addictive. I do it sometimes and I could do it all day. But no. I want to get up and do things and experience... life.’
Oh, to go through life being Dame Joan Collins: uncompromising, unfiltered, unapologetically Joan. When we kick off our interview at 10am in her very grand Belgravia home (think Buckingham Palace but without the threadbare carpets), there is a bottle of martini cocktail on the coffee table.
Alas, we don’t get stuck in — ‘Are you kidding? Who does that at this time, other than an alcoholic?’ — but you really do get the sense that this is a woman who still imbibes, in all senses, even if she no longer needs to for Dutch courage.
She might be the last (wo)man standing who still partakes. Every other celeb in Hollywood, even those half her age, seem to have gone tee-total, but she says: ‘I don’t abstain from anything. Although I don’t drink as much as I used to because I don’t like how it makes me feel the next day.’
Back in her Dynasty days the norm was long boozy lunches with fellow Brit chums like Michael Caine and Jane Seymour, ‘but that was before anyone knew about liver damage’.
The star, right, became a household name thanks to 80s TV series Dynasty, which she starred in for eight years as scheming seductress Alexis Carrington
The odd tipple is more of a social thing these days, darling; she prefers wine, ‘or whisky, if I have a sore throat’.
When was the last time she was properly drunk, I ask, expecting her to say 1989. ‘May 1. We celebrated my brother’s birthday. But maybe we shouldn’t say “drunk”. Shall we say “over-stimulated”?’
Such is her love for the odd glass, she can now boast her own signature martini cocktail; one that came out this week in good old M&S.
There was a bit of tweaking over getting it up to Dame Joan standard (she says she sent the first sample back, quibbling over the vermouth content) but it’s now on the shelves, in a gold bottle, looking as reassuringly resplendent as Joan herself.
Dame Joan Collins looks glamourous as ever as she poses for Femail magazine
She has been an ambassador for M&S — as much of a British institution as she is — for the past year. Mostly she is brilliant at it, marvelling at the foodhalls, children’s clothes, underwear (‘I buy my bras there’) and swimwear.
She is also lending her name to a rose and lily bouquet.
But she goes mischievously off-message when it comes to M&S nightwear. ‘Stuart [Machin, CEO of M&S] will be cross with me, but I have told him that their nightwear needs to get better. I could design a few pieces for them.’
What is wrong with M&S nightwear? ‘I think I’d make it sexier. It’s a bit dull, and I don’t like anything buttoned up.’
Tempting though it is to imagine that Dame Joan wafts around her boudoir, draped in silk, it’s not entirely true. I pluck up the courage to ask what she wears in bed, and the answer is disappointingly British. ‘Well so far this year it has been a cashmere jumper and trousers because it has been so cold.’
The common preconception is that Dame Joan is all about excess in everything, husbands (she’s on number five with her beloved Percy Gibson) and hairpieces included, but you don’t get to her stage of life without an underpinning of moderation. She reckons her mother set her up for a long life.
Joan works out during a pilates class at an exercise studio in Beverley Hills, California, in 1976
Wearing a racy outfit of a fur coat and underwear in 1979 film The Bitch
‘Mummy taught us the importance of exercise and gave us supplements like cod liver oil long before they were fashionable. And she banned sweets, as I did with my children. I’d put a sign on the door saying, “DO NOT BRING SWEETS INTO THIS HOUSE”.’
She despairs now of both the obesity epidemic, ‘and the state of children’s teeth’.
Mummy also taught her to cook (the most surreal part of our interview is when we discuss the making of sausage and mash). But never to clean. ‘I don’t do it,’ she says, which will surprise no one.
What does she make of the phenomenon of the TikTok cleaning influencer, who has made a career of filming herself scrubbing a shower screen? Her face is a picture. ‘Whatever floats your boat. If people get off on that, I suppose it’s better than going out and stabbing someone with a knife.’
Still caring about her appearance - and her waistline - Joan says: ‘If I need to drop three or four pounds, I will do a faddy diet... eating just bananas and eggs for a few days is fine’
This is a woman who is about personal responsibility, particularly on health matters. And while she mostly listens to her doctor (‘I have several, one in LA who is coming to stay with us, actually’), she is quite capable of making her own calls, thanks.
‘Doctors don’t necessarily always give you the right advice. This whole thing about drinking. They say you can only have so many units a day. What is that all about? It’s ridiculous. It’s like banning smoking.
‘Forget it. Never going to happen. People don’t like being told what to do.’
We chat about her diet, which is heavy on the asparagus and avocado, but there are defiances here too. ‘If I need to drop three or four pounds, I will do a faddy diet even though the doctors will say, “How can she say that?” But eating just bananas and eggs for a few days is fine.’
Some would despair that Dame Joan still cares about her waistline, but old habits die hard (she was given amphetamines to keep her svelte when she was a starlet).
She is witty and waspish, and a wonderful gossip. ‘What is going on with Jen and Ben?’ she asks, leading us into a conversation about Hollywood marriages.
‘There is this thing called DCOL – Doesn’t Count On Location. It happens a lot, like a holiday romance.’
Does she think J-Lo and Ben Affleck should have rekindled their relationship? ‘Oh God, I’m not going to give Jennifer Lopez advice about marriage. Please!’
Yet if there is one woman on the planet who can give marriage advice to women, surely it is Joan?
She tells me her daughter Tara has written a novel set partly in the world of women’s refuges — where Tara has worked — and she was ‘beyond shocked’. ‘I said to [Tara], “Why do these women keep going back to these men?”’
Joan Collins should know. Wasn’t her first marriage — which she entered a virgin, before being raped — an abusive one (that she went on to marry her rapist, Maxwell Reed, was a rather startling sign of the times).
Joan Collins, pictured with co-star Oliver Tobias in The Stud, describes herself as a ‘serial monogamist’, having been married five times
The actress, pictured in the 1950s, says she has been in several abusive relationships, adding that 'abuse isn't just physical'
‘Oh, yes. I’ve been in several, because abuse isn’t just physical. My marriage to Tony [Newley, her second husband and father of Tara and Sacha], was abusive because he banged every woman that walked. I think that is a form of abuse. When I would confront him, he would scream and shout and deny it.’
Eventually, she walked. ‘I was a strong woman. I was young, good looking, and I knew it. You have to be aware of what you have got. I thought, “I’m not going to stay with a man who can’t keep his trousers up.” It was heartbreaking because he was a good man.’
She doesn’t want to say too much about Ron Kass, husband number three and dad of her youngest child Katyana.
She describes herself as a ‘serial monogamist’, but there was a blip with Ron because she did cheat: ‘Although I do say if you are going to cheat on anyone it should be with Ryan O’Neal, who was very charming. But that was very much a fling.’
We could get distracted by her flings (Warren Beatty, anyone?), but back to her marriages. How many, does she think, could be defined as abusive, either emotionally or physically?
Joan Collins with Warren Beatty at a party in Los Angeles in 1959. Joan later revealed in her memoir, Behind The Shoulder Pads, that she became pregnant by then fiance Beatty, before having an abortion
‘All of them,’ she says. ‘Except this one. Touch wood. Percy is a gentleman. I don’t want to be racist about these things but he’s South American and men from [there] have a respect for women — all women, their mothers, grandmothers, aunties.’
It’s tragic that she divides the men in her life into the ones who were predators and the ones who were not.
The former list seems longer. She singles out ‘Richard Burton, George Peppard, Richard Todd’ as the ones who treated women like meat on a film set, and expected more than she ever wanted to give. By contrast, ‘the gentlemen were Paul Newman, Roger Moore, and dear Michael Nader, who were not about to force themselves on you’.
Floating in the pool of her villa in Saint Tropez, France, Joan Collins holds hands with her husband, Percy Gibson, who she married in 2002
Her dad, a showbiz agent, gave her the survival skills she would need, she reckons (‘he told me the best way to deal with predatory men was to laugh at them’).
Her work ethic also came from Daddy. ‘He had the attitude, “Nobody will do anything for you. Don’t expect anything to last”.’
Still, we expect Joan Collins to last for ever. She says she had ‘an MOT’ with one of those doctors yesterday, but acknowledges that life is, actually, quite random.
‘Look at the Princess of Wales. You can do all the right things, but who would think that a young mother like that could have whatever cancer she has? Some things you can’t avoid. I’m a bit of a fatalist there.’
Can we talk about what her legacy will be? She shudders. No, we cannot. She doesn’t want to go there, yet, not while there are bags to pack (she’s off to the south of France for the summer), parties to go to, glasses to chink.
‘I don’t want to think about that. I will leave that to Percy. I want to live for today,’ she says.
To that, and her, we must raise a toast.