Joan Collins

The Full Biography

Joan Collins. Actress. The Paddington kid who made a soap villain into a second life, then refused to become only the shoulder pads.

This is her story.

The image most people still carry is Alexis Carrington, a 1980s climate of power and a smirk. What the still cannot show is Joan Henrietta Collins of Paddington, London, a Rank and Hollywood ingénue the 1950s did not know what to do with, a sister to Jackie, and a life of Dynasty, novels, a damehood, and a woman still working in her nineties because the smirk was always a job, not a personality only.

She was born on May 23, 1933, in Paddington, to Elsa Bessant and Joseph William Collins, a talent agent. The house knew the business before she did. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Rank Organisation put her in British pictures while she was still a teenager: Lady Godiva Rides Again in 1951, then the ordinary grind of a contract ingénue. Hollywood took the face as an English exotic. Howard Hawks cast her in Land of the Pharaohs (1955). Fox used her in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), opposite Ray Milland, and in The Virgin Queen. She worked. She did not become a monument. The first career is a real file: Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), Seven Thieves (1960), Esther and the King (1960). The town had a use for the face and no long plan for the woman inside it.

She was not only a Fox exotic. In 1957 she played opposite Harry Belafonte in Island in the Sun, a picture the American South argued about. In 1967 she appeared on Star Trek as Edith Keeler in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” a love story that still sits near the top of every list of that series. The 1960s and 1970s were work, marriages, children, and a slow public fade that would have ended most 1950s faces. She had a daughter, Tara, and a son, Sacha, with the composer Anthony Newley, her second husband. A daughter, Katyana, was born during her marriage to the producer Ron Kass. She kept taking parts: Hammer horror, television, a living. In 1978 she starred in The Stud, from a novel by her sister Jackie, and in 1979 in The Bitch. The pictures were racy, commercial, and, for a woman past forty in that town, a pulse. They did not make her Alexis. They kept her employable until Alexis arrived.

In 1981 Aaron Spelling’s Dynasty was a struggling prime-time soap. Sophia Loren had turned the part down. Collins took Alexis Carrington — soon Alexis Carrington Colby — at forty-eight. She walked into a courtroom in the first episode of her run and the ratings moved. By 1985 Dynasty was the most-watched show in America. Shoulder pads, a hat, a smirk that could eat a room and a chart. She won a Golden Globe in 1983. She was nominated for an Emmy. She was, for a stretch, the most complete late-starting television star the American soap had hired. The “overnight” line is false. She had been working since 1951. Alexis was a job she was finally allowed to do at full volume.

The middle of Dynasty is the climate people still steal. The Moldavian massacre. The weddings. The catfights with Linda Evans’s Krystle that the tabloids treated as sport. Collins played Alexis as a woman who had a back story and liked herself. She has said so. The pads and the hats were costume. The volume was a decision. The series ended its prime-time run in 1989. She came back as Alexis in Dynasty: The Reunion in 1991. In 1992 she made her Broadway debut in Noël Coward’s Private Lives. She wrote novels and memoirs — Past Imperfect had already been a bestseller in 1978; more books followed, including Star Quality in 2002. She kept taking marks: guest runs, The Royals as Queen Helena, a turn on American Horror Story. In 2015 she was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to charity. She did not become a wax Alexis. She became a woman who still takes a mark in her nineties.

I knew who she was, I knew her back story, I knew everything about her, and I really, really liked her.Joan Collins, on Alexis Carrington

The turn is Dynasty and the refusal to retire the volume. A lot of 1950s faces became footnotes. She became a climate. Collins is more clerk of a persona than a victim of one. The clerk is the life. The pads are the climate. The Paddington girl is the file.

She has been married five times. The fifth, to Percy Gibson, began on February 17, 2002, and has held. He is younger. The tabloids treated the gap as a plot. The marriage treated it as a household. Tara, Sacha, and Katyana are the children. Jackie, the sister who wrote the books that kept Joan visible in the late 1970s, died in 2015, the same year the damehood arrived. Friends from the Dynasty years describe a professional who was first on the mark and done with a false line. Collins at a London lunch is the same first-and-done without a pad.

The later years

The years after the prime-time pads have been more parts, the title, and a living climate the culture still wants in a power suit. Home has been London and Los Angeles and the road between them, with Gibson as the companion who does not treat the smirk as a costume she is required to wear at breakfast. She has kept working because the work is the habit. In her eighties and nineties she has taken television, appeared at variety stages, published, and shown up at events in a hat that is both joke and standard. She does not perform frailty for the columns. She performs readiness.

Dame Joan is a civic fact now, not only a soap fact. The 2015 honour named charity as well as the catalog. She has raised money and lent the famous face to causes without turning the face into a full-time foundation brand. She has written about age in a town that still treats a woman past fifty as a problem to be recast. She has been, in interviews, blunt about that town, about the first career Alexis eclipsed and did not erase, about a sister who wrote bonkbusters while she played one. Jackie’s death in 2015 took the other Collins in the same weather. The public still files them as one party. The file is two shops.

She is in her nineties. The pads are a clip. Paddington and the first career are the file. The smirk is the job she still owns. Gibson is the household that held after four that did not. The children are grown. The grandchildren exist in a privacy she has been more willing to guard than the hats. She has not retired. Retirement, for a woman who was told she was finished before The Stud, is a word other people use. She uses call times. She uses a lipstick. She uses a line. She has published more memoirs, appeared at variety stages in London and Los Angeles, and treated a lunch as a scene that still required a professional. The town that files women by decade has had to keep filing her.

Jackie died in 2015, the same year the damehood arrived. The sister who had written the books that kept Joan visible in the late 1970s left the weather. Collins has spoken of her without turning the grief into a tour. She has raised money for charity the honour named. She has not built a foundation that swallows the name. She has kept the hats, the novels, and the mark. The Royals let her play a queen who knew the joke. American Horror Story let her play a different kind of volume. The 1950s pictures still play on the channels that sell nostalgia. The 1981 courtroom still plays as if it happened last week. Both are her. Neither is the whole throat.

The first career is worth naming again because Alexis buried it. Land of the Pharaohs is a Hawks picture. The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing is a Fox picture about a scandal. Island in the Sun is a picture the American South argued about. Edith Keeler on Star Trek is a love story science-fiction fans still treat as canon. Rank, RADA, Paddington — those rooms did not disappear when the pads arrived. They are why the pads worked. A woman who had been an ingénue the 1950s did not know what to do with knew how to play a woman the 1980s could not look away from. Gibson has been the companion of the dame years: premieres, lunches, a household that held. Tara, Sacha, and Katyana are the children of the marriages that did not. She is in her nineties and still takes a mark. That sentence is the second act. The town that told her she was finished before The Stud has had to watch her outlive the telling. Maxwell Reed, Anthony Newley, Ron Kass, Peter Holm — four marriages in the file before Gibson. Newley is the composer and the father of Tara and Sacha. Kass is Katyana. Holm was a tabloid weather that ended. Gibson, since 2002, is the household that did not. She has written the novels and the memoirs and kept the lipstick in the kit. Paddington is still the first room. RADA is still the shop. Alexis is still the climate. The damehood is still the paper. The mark is still hers. She is in her nineties and still working. The 1951 Rank girl and the 1981 courtroom woman are the same professional. The town that files women by decade has had to keep the file open. She still takes the mark. She still owns the smirk. That is the present tense.

Illness has not been the advertised plot. Longevity has. She has outlived the men who ran Rank, the executives who did not know what to do with the 1950s face, the producers who thought Alexis was a last throw, and the critics who treated the pads as a joke on her. The joke is on the town that files women by decade. She is still here. She still takes a mark. She still writes. She still arrives at a lunch as if the lunch were a scene and the scene required a professional.

The spotlight moved to the next soap and then came back every time a woman over forty ate a room. Alexis is the climate. RADA is the correction. Jackie is the double bill. The nineties — the age, not the decade — are the file. Dynasty still plays in reruns that make the hats look like history and the smirk look current. Young actresses hired to play rich villains still steal the walk. They do not steal the thirty years of work that made the walk possible. Collins has said she knew who Alexis was. She has spent the years since proving she also knew who Joan was, and that the second knowledge required a damehood, a fifth marriage, and a refusal to sit down.

There is no death date on this life. There is a present tense: a dame in her nineties who can still be recognized from a courtroom entrance in 1981, and who still declines to become only the entrance. Paddington still claims the girl. Fox still has the first pictures. Spelling’s old show still has the second life. Gibson has the household. The mark is still hers.

After the spotlight moved

It moved to the next soap and then came back every time a woman over forty ate a room. Alexis is the climate. RADA is the correction. Jackie is the double bill. The nineties — the age, not the decade — are the file. The reunion picture is in the catalog. Private Lives is in the file. The damehood is on the paper.

She came out of Paddington, worked the 1950s, took Alexis at forty-eight, wrote, married, took a damehood, and kept the mark. If you only remember the pads, you have the still. If you remember Rank, forty-eight, Jackie, Gibson, and the title, you have her.

Portrait: Frantogian · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

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