© Julie Smith
Joan Collins, currently on stage in Birmingham, thinks London theatre is over. She tells Julie Smith © why.
“What is she like?” is the only question I have been asked since interviewing Joan Collins this week. To a woman and a man all they want to know about is her manner and her appearance. Not one person has asked, “What did she say?” And there is a significant difference between the two.
Preconceptions, expectations we all have them.
And the media is partly to blame. We ‘know’ Joan Collins as the glamorous super bitch Alexis Carrington Colby in Dynasty. We ‘know’ her as the star of the Stud and The Bitch, the producer of mini-series Sins which topped the ratings in the US and we ‘know’ her as the author of steamy novels. We also ‘know’ her for her colorful personal life. Joan recently celebrated her second wedding anniversary with theatrical manager Percy Gibson. He is more than three decades her junior and husband number five.
What we don’t ‘know’ about Joan Henrietta Collins, is that her five-decade career includes 55 films, 50 TV shows, nine plays and ten books, four of which have made the bestseller list. She has also been the recipient of numerous industry awards. Just before her 50th birthday she took most of her clothes off for Playboy magazine and in 1997 she received the OBE for her contribution to the arts and charity work.
And the charming, passionate actress (I talked to her on the
telephone) who unbelievably turns 71 next month, comes to Birmingham’s Hippodrome Theatre this week as the star of Full Circle. “I had been looking for a suitable play to do for a couple of years. I wanted to do a comedy. And this one found me via Duncan Weldon of Triumph Entertainment who took it to my agent.
“I loved the role, had to do a bit of reworking to turn it from a three-act to a two-act play - modern audiences won’t sit through three acts any more - and we have a
wonderful cast and a brilliant young composer.
“I’m doing it because I consider myself to be a comedy actress, even though I am not know for it particularly,” says Joan, who has also been asked to do a sitcom in the autumn - Ealing Studio have commissioned a script from Jonathon Harvey, the writer of BBC televisions Gimme, Gimme, Gimme starring Kathy Burke.
He adapted it form the French play Les Enfants d’Edouard and the plot centres on the ‘slightly scatty, but intelligent and literary’ Denise Darvel who unexpectedly tells her children that each of them has different fathers and she didn’t marry one of them - a confession certain to outrage chic French society of the 1950s. In the interests of respectability, the search for a candidate for the role of father-substitute ensures, with surprising and delightful results.
“Denise
Darvel is a lot like me,” says Joan who is the devoted mother of Tara, Katy and son Sacha. “She’s had three children whom she loves a great deal, but she’s never married, unlike me - and of course she is a best-selling author, which I am too!”
Joan’s eleventh book Misfortune’s Daughters, which tells the stories of two poor little rich girls, who have much in terms of money, but much less in terms of love, is due to be published in October.
“The tour is going to be tough but
that’s what this business is all about. Friends who do a lot of touring tell me to expect exhaustion to set in after ten or 11 weeks and of course it will be hard changing the hotel, dressing room, theatre every week. But I am looking forward to it.” However, even a Hollywood legend a lady who surely continues to work out of choice not necessity, knows how unpredictable and commercially driven her business is. And believes touring is the way forward for directors and actors.
“It’s nice to know that you are guaranteed to work on a project for a significant amount of time,” says Joan, who last came to Birmingham to appear on Pebble Mill.
“the West End is very dodgy now. I know to shows, starring friends of mine, that have had to close despite very good reviews. “People aren’t going to see theatre in London as much any more. It’s very sad. There’s a big fear of terrorism, traffic congestion makes it very difficult to get into the city, and parking charges are extortionate. This s not the case in the provinces.”
Daughter of the prominent theatrical agent Joe Collins and his wife Elsa, Joan was
born in London and made her state debut at the age of nine in Ibsen’s A Dolls House at the Arts Theatre. She went on to become a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when she was 16 and after only 18 months was signed to an exclusive contract by the Rank Organization. But it is her ‘very good upbringing by a strict father and soft, domesticated mother’ that has held her an dher tree sisters ‘in good stead through our life.’
“I was brought up to believe that you
only get out of life, what you put in to it. You don’t get anything for nothing and hard work and discipline is the foundation of everything. I wasn’t spoilt at all. “I have worked hard and continue to work hard. I would also like to think I have put back into society, and not just through what I have earned in monetary terms.”
Joan is an honorary founding member of the NSPCC, has supported several foster children in India for the past 15 years, has been a patron of
the International Foundation for Children with Learning Disabilities since 1983 and is actively involved with many UK charities associated with breast cancer. She is also a big believer in discipline - but not of the ‘caning’ type. “People say to me ‘why do you look so good Joan’”. I have yet to meet her face to face so can’t personally vouch for those who say ‘she looks like a sophisticated 50 something in love.
Her retort? “Well I don’t sit and eat cream buns all day.
Says Joan, who classes Botox ‘as poison’, endorses a good cosmetics and doesn’t have a Dr Atkins diet book in sight: “I believe it is very important to eat properly and I don’t snack on a lettuce leaf and a carrot. That means good wine, the occasional steak and a chocolate mousse.
But believes that author of beauty bible Joan’s Way Looking Good, Feeling Great, her youthful looks and vitality are down to good nutrition, vitamin supplements, exercise, relaxation, love, but also
positive mental attitude. “You can’t expect to exercise once a month and look like Twiggy. You have to have self discipline. I exercise four times a week for an hour or so. I hate cardiovascular work but do lots of stretching, yoga type stuff and lots of punching.
We didn’t have the luxury of magazines and TV in our day. My mother, grandmother and aunt brought us up to eat healthily and look after ourselves and now my children are doing the same with
theirs. What does concern me deeply is the obesity epidemic that we now have in this country and which has already hit the US, my second home. “I fin it utterly extraordinary that people don’t realize that the reason that they are obese is simply that they eat too much. “And you have to blame the manufacturers and the portions they produce. They are gargantuan.”
So what next for Joan after Full Circle?
Well there’s the book to finish, the sitcom to pursue and another JC project to develop. Eight months ago, Joan and Percy fell in love with an American novel. For the first time “we puts are hand in our pockets and bought it’s film rights and are now talking to directors about its future.” If successful it will be the first time Joan has produced and starred in the same production, but the pair are not holding their breaths “You can’t hurry anything in Hollywood.”
Then it’s time to collapse at their retreat in the South of France, before returning to their New York apartment in time for the birth of Sacha and Angela’s first child in May.
“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday. And I love today” (William White) headlines Joan’s biography on her web site. It is then personalized in the following words.
“William White epitomizes how I have tried to live my life. My life has changed radically since I
started Dynasty. The stardom I never tried to attain as a young actress I have now. How long will it last - who knows? This is the toughest of professions. Very tough. Flavor of the month changes rapidly. Only the strongest, cleverest and the most resilient survive - but survival is not the only objective.”
This is what Joan Collins is like. |
