At 88 years old Joan collins You can say that you have lived several lives in one: star of Hollywood’s golden age, forgotten in her thirties, victim of the misogyny of her industry and financial hardship, but rising from her ashes every time she bet on herself. She was a girlfriend of Warren Beatty, a friend of Roger Moore, and even received advice from Marilyn Monroe. She married five times, divorced four of them, and even made history by being the cover of Playboy magazine after she was over 50. Her life has so many chapters, which is more interesting, that she has just premiered a narrated and narrated documentary on the BBC. starring herself, without leaving anything or anyone in the pipeline.
In This is Joan Collins The British star looks back on her love and professional life as she remembers Dynasty like the time when “I was on top of the world”. Yet as she blew up the ratings as evil Alexis Colby and made her mark as one of the greatest villains in television history, at home and away from the spotlight she lived a marital nightmare with her fourth husband.
Forgotten at 45, reduced to sporadic roles in series and star of petty horror films (such as The empire of ants or The orgies of madness), Joan Collins opted to renew herself again with a film that was a success in the United Kingdom. It was titled The Stud (1978) and was based on a novel by his own sister. The production was sold as the British alternative to Saturday night Fever and it showed a Joan turned into a nympho by caring. It was one of the most successful of 1978 in her country and made Joan discover a detail that until then she did not know: that the public loved to see her in the role of villain. And so, just after discovering that her third husband Ronald S. Kass had remortgage their home and they were drowning in debt, came the offer that fitted perfectly with their discovery: the role of villainous ex-wife in the soap opera. Dynasty.
It was the year 1981 and the series had not hooked the audience yet. That’s when Collins was added for season two, playing the vengeful Alexis Colby and resorting to her usual hair and makeup look to create an icon of television glamor. With her on screen, her verbal and physical wars with Linda Evans – who played Krystle Carrington, the new wife of her ex-husband, the oil magnate Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) – and her Machiavellian villain phrases in shots that highlighted her beauty. , Joan Collins caused the series’ ratings to skyrocket, becoming an international phenomenon. However, as success knocked on her door again, her third marriage fell apart and after 11 years of marriage, she and Kass divorced.
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It was the third divorce for the actress after accumulating difficult and painful separations. The first took place in 1956 with Maxwell Reed, an actor 14 years older than her whom she married after the man took advantage of her on the first date. She herself recounted what she experienced several times – in interviews, columns and now in the documentary – revealing that she was 18 and had no experience with men, when she agreed to go to the actor’s hotel on the first date. Once there, he asked her to wait for him while he went to shower, handed him a magazine with explicit photos and served him a rum and Coca Cola. Collins does not remember anything after that, but that the man allegedly raped her after drugging her with that drink. She never told her parents or reported it to the police for fear of being judged. Collins agreed to marry him despite everything, divorcing four years later when she was already a rising actress hired by 20th Century Fox. She had to give him their savings in the lawsuit and pay their legal costs. He claimed to have been the one who discovered her and took all her money, forcing her to ask the studio for $ 10,000 to be able to pay him (Express). With her second husband, actor and songwriter Anthony Newley and father of her first two children, she lived through years of happiness until she learned that he had been unfaithful throughout their marriage. And with Ronald S. Kass, former manager of The Beatles, third husband and with whom she had her third child, she lived through hardships and debts but claims to have been happy.
And so he became single again at age 50, being one of the most acclaimed names on television thanks to Dynasty. She was adored by the public, acclaimed in television awards and a sex symbol in her own right, posing for Playboy magazine in 1983 to say loudly that beauty is ageless. “One of the reasons I did the cover was because I’m a feminist and I wanted to say ‘look, you don’t have to be 23 to be in Playboy. You don’t have to be considered attractive only if you are very young. You can be pretty and sexy when you are older. ‘” she said in an interview at the time after having experienced Hollywood’s phobia against female age when the industry retired actresses when they reached 27.
Her success was such that upon discovering that her co-star, John Forsythe, was earning much more than her when the ratings had risen as a result of her entry into the series, she had to beg for a raise. She herself recounted in the past the misogyny that surrounded her in the production, to the point that her ex-husband in the fiction demanded by contract that she must appear in the center or at the top of all promotional images. It eventually cost him but he succeeded, raising his cache to $ 2 million a year (or £ 1.5 million, as revealed in the documentary).
It was then, Successful millionaire who met Peter Holm in a London restaurant, a Swedish singer whom she married in 1985 in Las Vegas. “Big mistake” Joan Collins acknowledges in the documentary.
“It didn’t take long for the problems to start ” ensures to reveal below the nightmare that lived at home while the world only saw the glitz and glamor of his fame. “It was the case of a very powerful and successful woman marrying a type of man who was not powerful, was not successful and did nothing and be empowered ” summed up in an interview from the 80s. It turns out that according to her own account in the documentary, Peter Holm took charge of his career and fired his wife’s agents and managers. Instead, she took 20% of all the earnings that she was going to accumulate.
Joan Collins admits that none of her friends approved of it but she stayed in her thirteen for “stubborn ”, not wanting to admit that he had made a mistake. However, the problems were not only summed up to economic use but also to the bullying to which she was subjected. “His rage was poisonous and when we had fights he would taunt me sarcastically saying ‘if only people could see the great Alexis now, what a pathetic crying baby’ ” the actress confesses in the BBC documentary.
“It was incredibly stupid, particularly since all my family and friends hated it. ” wrote herself in a column for Daily mail in 2008. “But somehow he convinced me through emotional blackmail to marry him, even though I already had three divorces in my past. “
With complete sincerity, Collins reflects on the sad situation of having been at the peak of her professional career while “allowing” bullying at home. In the aforementioned column, she confessed that her husband assured her that by managing his finances he was making her earn more money. But she didn’t know if it was true because “I worked between 14 and 16 hours a day and spent weekends doing advertising and wardrobe adjustments ”.
It adds that it forced her to renegotiate her contract with the executives of Dynasty threatening not to go to work. Something that was going “against their work ethic ”, but that the fights and threats she received from him made her comply with his demands.
Barely a few months had passed since the wedding and the romantic situation of the courtship had completely changed. And while Holm allegedly threatened to tell the tabloids lies about her, Collins secretly sought out an attorney. In the end, the separation was not long in coming, although the legal dispute lasted 15 months, becoming one of the divorces devoured by the tabloids of that time.
Holm asked for a pay of 50,000 pounds a month ($ 67,440) as he locked himself in the mansion he shared with the actress, threatening to shoot anyone who tried to evict him. Collins revealed that he threatened to take her entire fortune from her if she went through with the divorce, as the man paced their mansions with banners reading ‘Joan, you have our $ 2.5 million house, a home we bought during our marriage and now I’m homeless, help! ‘ (Daily Mail). Beside him, another man carried a sign that read ‘Joan, you made $ 100,000 a week thanks to Peter, please give him a decent home.’
“It was incredibly humiliating. About half a million dollars of my earnings had been paid, living without paying rent or expenses, and couldn’t you afford a rent? ” she wrote angrily in that column. Finally, thanks to the prenuptial agreement, the judge awarded him a one-time payment of $ 80,000.
“The marriage had already cost me enough, both financially and emotionally, and I was delighted to be back in my life again. ” wrote. And then Joan Collins turned the page. Dynasty It came to an end in 1989 and with accumulated fame and fortune, the actress finally gave herself fully to her great passion: London’s West End. He starred in and produced several theatrical works, returned several times to television, wrote some books and even lived a legal battle with the American publisher Random House (which he won). But he always kept going.
It was when he reached 69 springs that he again gave the marriage union a chance. She met Percy Gibson when he was producing a play that she starred in in 2000 and they were married two years later at Claridge’s Hotel in London. Neither of them cared that he was 32 years younger than her, because it was “fantastic” Y “they were madly in love. “
And, to this day, they are still together. “At last I found my soul mate and my husband forever ” described in the documentary.
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Joan Collins’ marital nightmare while she was TV’s biggest star with ‘Dynasty’