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“Denver Clan” star Joan Collins: Hollywood’s first bitch celebrates her 90th birthday

“Denver Clan” star Joan Collins: Hollywood’s first bitch celebrates her 90th birthday

As “Beast” Alexis, she wrote TV history with the cult series “Denver Clan”: Joan Collins. On May 23, she will be 90 years old.

She is a “beast”, they say about her. This is what anxious men like to call women who are particularly beautiful, intelligent, a bit tricky and very sexy – in one word: superior. Actress Joan Collins has long outgrown this stage. On May 23, she will be 90 years old.

Nevertheless, she is still classified in the “beast” category, towards which one (n) dares certain impertinence. Because she doesn’t look like a 90-year-old lady, but like an ageless Joan Collins, who has actually always existed, malicious tongues blaspheme: “You don’t know exactly, maybe she’s already 150 …”

To such wickedness she would respond with an incomparably wicked smile, with a slightly raised eyebrow, the unmistakable sign of the superior arrogance of British aristocrats.

King Charles appointed her “Dame Commander”

A few years ago, Joan Collins played the Grand Duchess Alexandra of Oxford in the American TV series “The Royals”, but of course she is neither a grand duchess, nor a princess, nor a baroness. In fact, it was in 2015 by the then heir to the throne and current British King Charles III. (74) ennobled as “Dame Commander” of the Order of the British Empire for her social commitment as patron of a children’s hospice and her fight against breast cancer. Her sister, the writer and best-selling author Jacqueline J. Collins (1937-2015), who was six years her junior, died of this disease.

Joan Collins has belonged to the aristocracy of international show business for decades, although she was never one of the very first ranks of Hollywood stars. There is no hierarchy with her: she simply belongs.

With “Denver Clan” she wrote television history

She was already 48 when she became one of the most famous actresses in the world with the TV series “Denver Clan” (1981-1989). Joan Collins was probably the only person on the planet who had the talent to play the devilish Alexis Colby-Carrington so brilliantly. A woman who fought her silver-haired ex-husband Blake Carrington (John Forsythe, 1918-2010), a petroleum billionaire, with all the means of intrigue.

Joan embodied this Alexis with an ingenious mixture of bitch, diva and vamp so convincingly that everyone was absolutely convinced: Collins is really like that. Carrington’s second wife Krystle (Linda Evans, 80) suffered under the beautiful, malicious Alexis, which caused her and many millions of her viewers to burst into tears. They all agreed: Joan Collins is a bitch from hell.

Few realized that she and Linda Evans were actually close friends. Long after “Denver-Clan” both played theater together and even went on tour with it until 2007.

“I have no airs and graces”

She sees herself as a completely unpretentious guy. She is not a Hollywood icon and certainly not a diva, : “I’m good at embodying such female characters on screen, but in real life I don’t have any airs and graces, I couldn’t do that at all, I’m far too down-to-earth for that. ” Only in one point does she become beastly: “I can’t stand idiots, stupidity and incompetence at all.”

She was born in London and is still a committed British woman. Her father Joseph William Collins (1902-1988) came from South Africa, came from a Jewish family and was a talent scout who looked after Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones and the Beatles, among others. Already as a child she was on the theater stage. After school, she enjoyed an elite education at the traditional Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and a great theater career seemed inevitable. Then she went to the USA in the 1950s, played Shaw and Shakespeare on Broadway, filmed with Paul Newman, Richard Burton, Harry Belafonte, Gregory Peck and Bing Crosby. Small but fine roles.

In the shadow of Elizabeth Taylor

With her delicate face, she was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, shall we say: the second most beautiful, because there was another of the same type who was even more in the sun: Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011), also a British from London. And that stood in the way of Joan Collins’ rise to the top Hollywood ranks.

She took it well. While Liz Taylor fell in love with misery and then fled from drinking sprees, Joan Collins let her brain, which she has plenty of, show off impressively. After the “Denver Clan” ended, she wrote beauty guides, biographies and novels, and she also made good money from them. And she shot other successful series like “The Royals” and most recently “American Horror Story”.

The “Denver Beast” never got the Oscar, but the Emmy and the Golden Globe. She is also the icon of countless gay clubs.

What’s her beauty secret?

If she owes her optical agelessness to a surgeon, then he did a first-class job. She doesn’t look cut down, but like a preserved Alexis: still the same hairstyle, the same smile, the same look. your beauty secret? “Never put your face in the sun. No sport, it bores me to death! Always wear make-up”, .

The subject of men has contributed to her reputation as an unbridled vamp, as has her signature role as Alexis. Numerous love affairs (including with Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Ryan O’Neal) and five husbands, from whom she has three children, that is her personal record.

Her first husband Maxwell Reed (1952-1956) wanted to sell her to an Arab sheikh, so she quickly divorced. The current husband, the American Percy Gibson (58), is 32 years younger and the marriage has lasted for 21 years. He was the best of all, she told “AZ”. “Percy and my kids are the most important things in my life. I’m very lucky.”

Her autobiography will be published soon

She still works as an actress and commutes between her residences in London, Los Angeles and on the Côte d’Azur. Most recently she wrote her autobiography “Behind The Shoulder Pads”, in which she describes her memories and adventures – and “makes fun of herself”. The book will be out in a few months.

Her preference for hearty pleasures – she likes Bavarian food and beer – reveals a different Joan Collins than the noble bitch Alexis, who only ever sips champagne. Film buffs occasionally spot her shopping at the Waitrose deli in London’s upscale Belgravia area. In the shopping trolley of the elderly lady, who usually has a whiff of Shalimar perfume around, there is a lot of fast food such as burgers, spaghetti rings from Heinz, lots of cheese and Pringles chips. That’s how the real Joan Collins is.

Source: Stern

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