Joan Collins tells her story: raped by her first husband and treated as a whore and bitch

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Joan Collins tells her story: raped by her first husband and treated as a whore and bitch

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Joan Collins declares herself a feminist, but she worries about young people suffering. Photo Lisa O’Connor / AFP

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“I’m not a bad girl,” Joan Collins said, leaning back on a white sofa. “She’s a very innocent woman. But she has dark hair and green eyes, and I think nasusunog daw“.

It was on a sun-kissed California afternoon at his apartment, which was part of a luxurious building on the outskirts of Beverly Hills. Joan Collins, an actress whose career is from phenomenal (The land of the Pharaohs), the ridiculous (the empire of ants) and the massive comic (Dynasty), she wore white pants, an aquamarine blouse, and white sneakers.

A pink diamond the size of a strawberry it weighed on one of his fingers; messy hair. How many synthetic zebras died for those pillows? And the poof? many.

As for the heat, well, it’s 29 degrees outside.

Joan Collins, at the Vanity Fair party, after the Oscars 2022. Photo Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

Joan Collins, at the Vanity Fair party, after the Oscars 2022. Photo Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

Analysis of the life of a diva

Collins, 88, invited me to his home, offered me coffee, water, and various fancy cookies, to talk about. This is Joan Collins (This is Joan Collins), a documentary aired on the BBC on New Year’s Day and went on BritBox, Netflix’s competitor platform in the UK.

What does it mean to review your life for the project? “I’m not very analytical”he said languidly. “I’m just doing it. I can just do it.”

For the film, Collins gave producers access to his archives and home movies. For the rest, he throws away his contribution. “Sabi: ‘Don’t put on too much nudity’But he narrated the film with much of what he says was adapted from his memoir.

“Here I am,” he opens in the opening moments, “after seven decades in business, to tell you a thing or two about how to survive the dangers of the profession and what it really feels like to get what you want.

Joan Collins in "Dynasty".  His last great role.

Joan Collins in “Dynasty”. His last great role.

A childhood at war

Joan Collins was born in London in 1933, the eldest daughter of a dance teacher and a talent agent. As a child, he lived in the London Blitz -the bombings, the evacuation, the uprising-which caused him to be impatient with what he thought he was sorry for.

“I have to say that every time I read about an actor today, they were all abused or had a horrible childhood,” he said. “I had a good childhood, apart from the war”.

At the age of 17, he signed with a British film studio. She didn’t think it was glamorous. Not then. But the press disagreed, and he recalled some of the the nicknames they gave her: the bad girl of Great Britain, the whore of cafes, the hot luggage. They fight him in that sense.

At first, he was bothered, he said, “then I just shrugged and moved on.”

At age 21, Fox took him and he went to California. is separated from her first husband, Maxwell Reed, an actor who raped her on their first date. As he wrote in his early memoir, Past Imperfect: An Autobiography, and reiterated in the documentary, most of the men he met in the business were predators.

He remembers being chased to a house in Palm Springs and lured into a car. Then he stopped worrying. “These are all unpleasant memories that I don’t want to go back to”, said. “It happened. It happened to girls all the time.”

How did you survive that? He shrugged and continued. “I laughed a lot in their faces,” he said.

the bad reputation

In these early years, gained a reputation for lewdness, which was not entirely deserved, although it became part of his fame. (An auction in 2015 of her belongings included not only love letters, but also the headboard of her bed.)

Joan Collins doesn’t care what people say: “I shrugged and moved on,” she said.

Joan Collins doesn’t care what people say: “I shrugged and moved on,” she said.

“I’ve had a lot of boyfriends, but successively,” she said. “Y I slept with some of them. not at the same time. I think I was ahead of my time, because the women didn’t do that. “

At age 30, she married actor-songwriter Anthony Newley and had two children.

When her relationship with Newley ended, she married music executive Ron Kass and had a daughter.

Later, there was a fourth wedding-with Swedish singer Peter Holm. (“What I just didn’t understand was the Swede,” he said. “It was a total mistake.”) Now living with his fifth wife, theatrical producer Percy Gibson. He brought water and took cookies.

His departure from the industry and his difficult return

She left the industry after marrying Newley, and it was hard for her to come back. The documentary includes excerpts from a particularly low point, the B-movie of real estate investors versus mutated insects. the empire of ants (1977). How did you deal with poor quality material? “You did everything you could,” he said. “You learned your lines, you got it right and you got down to business.”

Joan Collins and her fifth husband, Percy Gibson.  Photo Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

Joan Collins and her fifth husband, Percy Gibson. Photo Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

Only on rare occasions has he escaped typecastbut he also shrugged off his conversation with actor John Gielgud, in which Gielgud told him that since he could never escape his physicality, I could never play an ugly woman. “That’s true for a few years.”

She believes that good looks can be a deterrent to landing quality roles: “That’s what young actresses realize these days, so most of them try to look as normal as possible.”

In the late 1970s, he reappeared in two soft -genre films –the stallion Y The dog– taken from the novels of his sister Jackie Collins. This exposure led to her most famous role, Alexis in Aaron Spelling’s late-night soap opera, Dynasty.

Despite well -known studio fights and little reaction by producers to his demands for equal pay, still proud Dynasty.

Many of the memorabilia coming out of his apartment are from then on. “It’s fascinating,” he said. “These were very, very rich people, most of them pretty.” He compared it to the current success of Succession, although he commented already on Succession they wore more ordinary clothes.

Lots to say.  Joan Collins, in an autobographic book.

Lots to say. Joan Collins, in an autobographic book.

Dynasty, the last great duty

Dynasty ended more than three decades ago. Joan Collins hasn’t played a big role since. He thinks he knows why. “The casting directors said, ‘We can’t use Joan Collins in this bitch role, because it’s too obvious.’ And ‘Oh, we can’t include him in this other role. can only play“.

He went on, however, describing his fascinating life in columns for the British weekly The Spectatorwhere his former boss was Boris Johnson. “Fun, Super Funny, Great Joke”is as he describes, acknowledging that jester is probably the wrong word.

“He never took a word out of my diaries,” he added.

Collins hasn’t changed much. (Although her appearance has changed a bit, though he said he only tried botox once: “I cried and left the consultation”). Nor is he sure the entertainment industry has.

“I don’t have men approaching me, so I don’t know,” he said. “But I think probably.” However, after the #MeToo movement, he seems to be worried about men.

“Sadly, crI see that young men are now suffering from being labeled as toxic to men“, he says,” because of this rise of anti-masculinity. “

And yet recognized as a feminist. “I believe that women are equal to men in every way,” she said. “Except for physical strength. People say I didn’t burn my bra, I wore lipstick. So what? I’m so proud to be a woman.” He added that he does not want to be called an actor (neutral to name actors in general), and he prefers the actor.

Joan Collins, John Forsythe and Linda Evans, Dynasty stars.

Joan Collins, John Forsythe and Linda Evans, Dynasty stars.

“What’s wrong with being an artist?” she said. “What’s wrong with being a mother? What’s wrong with being a woman? Woman? I don’t want that word taken away from me.”

It was almost an hour after the conversation, before I was invited to leave the apartment with the same warmth I had received: a photographer arrived and Collins had to clean up. But first I have to ask him about the opening sentence of the documentary: What does it really feel like to get what you want?

He gets up every morning and thanks “God or whoever,” he says. “I mean I’m very lucky.”

Then he added, with something that might have been a wink, “Pero sometimes you make your own luckno? “

Source: The New York Times

Translation: Patricia Sar

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Source: Clarin

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