© HELLO MAGAZINE
Little Ava Grace Newley is a
cheerful baby who has inherited her paternal grandmother's pretty heart-shaped face and enormous eyes. To say she's been blessed would not be putting too fine a point on it, considering the woman in question is none other than Joan Collins.
"Unfortunately, I was touring the UK in a play when Ava was born," says the actress. "I was emailed pictures of her but I didn't actually get to hold her in my arms until July when she was two months old. And then I just fell in love
with her."
Ava was born in New York on 12 May, weighing 7lb. The first child of Joan's son Alexander "Sacha" Newley and his wife Angela, she is a third grandchild for Joan, who has a six-year-old granddaughter, Miel,and a 13-month-old grandson, Weston, by Sacha's elder sister Tara, who lives in Somerset.
On a beautiful autumn day, HELLO! received an exclusive invitation to meet the latest member of the Collins dynasty at her parents' sky-high New York apartment
with its stunning view of Central Park and down at ground level for an impromptu picnic.
"One of the things I love about living in New York with my husband Percy," says Joan, "is that we're only a ten-minute cab ride from Sacha and Angela and Ava.
Father and grandmother need little encouragement to sing Ava's praises.
"It's just so wonderful having her here with us," says Sacha. "She's such an even-tempered, observant child. I like to think
it's half-nature but also half-nurture. We love her so much. We're constantly touching and kissing her. I think it's starting to bear fruit in her temperament. She wakes up each morning with a smile on her face."
Joan agrees. "They should hang a sign on Ava's pram," she says. "It would read, 'Please Do Not Kiss Me!'
"Whenever Sacha or Angela take her out, people swarm around her like bees to a honeypot. We were walking down Park Avenue last weekend and
we bumped into Ivana Trump. She couldn't stop cooing over Ava.
"She's so gorgeous – like a little Botticelli painting. But then look at her parents! No wonder they've produced someone so adorable. And they're so supportive of each other."
"Ava gives my mother enormous joy but the feeling is clearly mutual," says Sacha, repaying the compliment.
"Whenever she sees her grandmother, her face lights up. It just warms the cockles of my heart to see what
pleasure this little girl brings to everyone who knows her. My mother describes babies as the new aristocracy, small people who are treated like royalty, which is exactly as it should be. Give them love now and they won't become egomaniacs as adults, craving the attention they never received as children."
Joan, currently back in the UK to promote her new novel, Misfortune's Daughters (Robson Books), clearly relishes her role as a grandmother. "You get the best of them, don't
you? You're not woken up in the night. You don't have to change their nappies. You see them for a couple of hours twice a week. You can spoil them and give them toys – and then you can hand them back."
What will she encourage Ava to call her? "Oh, Dodo," she says. "My other two grandchildren call me that. It's a family name. My younger brother, Bill, couldn't say Joanie when he was little and it came out sounding like Dodo. The name stuck. I like it."
Sacha, now 38, met Angela Tassoni, 35, at a dinner party in Los Angeles in 2000. "I don't mind admitting that I was overwhelmed by her beauty," he confesses. "I asked if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes. Within two months, we were inseparable."
When Sacha decided to move to New York the following year to pursue his career as a painter, Angela moved with him and continued her own work as a jewellery designer. Within months of their arrival came the drama and
tragedy of 9/11. "That turned out to be a very bonding experience for us," says Sacha. They married a year late.
So did he give up his bachelor days easily? "Well, it was something I came to by degrees. I am, by nature, a cautious man. It wasn't the sort of love at first sight you read about in romance novels because I don't see how that can be possible. I'd compare that to a 100-yard sprint and a relationship that could end just as quickly. In the best possible sense,
Angela and I have embarked on a marathon."
Sacha is effusive in his appreciation of his wife. "She's such a lady, extremely feminine and self-possessed. She has great personal integrity and wonderful judgment. She's incredibly artistic, which means she also understands my work. She's a beautiful soul, a rare being who hasn't been sullied by the world as it is now."
Fatherhood, he says, has long been an ambition. "It was something I'd always looked forward to
and something I knew I wanted when I found the right person. Making another life is the most important thing we do so it's not something to be entered into lightly. There comes a point, of course, when It's going to be a leap of faith but you consciously do everything within your power to make sure you have the right environment for a child."
Joan, who has been listening, interjects: "Sacha always said he wanted to have children, but that he needed to find the right woman. He
was also determined to be a wise and patient and good father – and strict, too. He's quite right, of course. So many children these days don ’t know the meaning of discipline and then they run out of control. I asked him recently whether he'd allow Ava to start dating at 15 and he look horrified. I was pleased because my father had exactly the same attitude."
Ava Grace, named after Angela's aunt and Sacha's paternal grandmother, was born at Mount Sinai, the very same hospital
where Sacha first entered the world in November 1965.
"I can see it from this apartment," he says, pointing to the building through the window. "In a way, there's a great feeling of having come home. Angela and I married in the Cathedral of St John the Divine on the Upper West Side. So I like to think of myself as being in a triangle bounded by where Ava and I were born, by where Angela and I were married, and by where the three of us now live."
Ava was a
little late arriving, or, as Sacha says with a smile, "unwilling to pay the hotel tab". "I was present at the birth," he continues, "and I like to think I was helpful throughout Angela's labour, but men feel pretty useless at such moments. If I could have taken some of her pain, I would. But it's hard not to feel a bit of a spare part.
"When Ava appeared at last, I dissolved into tears. It was the high point of my life so far – no question. Each birth is a
miracle, an overwhelming experience."
However much a baby's arrival is keenly anticipated, the reality can be quite different. So how has it been for Sacha and Angela? "It's just amazing," he says. "The apartment isn't enormous but that works well because Ava is somehow always in our orbit. She's not closed off from us in a nursery; her cot is right next to our bed. Sometimes, she sleeps right through the night, although this past week she's been waking every two
hours wanting Angela to feed her. There's one more month of that before she is weaned on to solids – and then we'll throw a big party!"
One abiding sadness is that Sacha's father, the late actor-composer-singer Anthony Newley, will never meet his granddaughter. "It's that old thing," says Sacha. "Something, or someone, gets taken from you with one hand and then someone else gets given to you with the other. To be honest, I haven't felt overly gloomy about it
because, for me, my father is still so present all the time. I know he's not here to talk to but I don ’t feel his absence.
"We constantly play his music to Ava. When Angela was pregnant, she asked a friend to make a compilation disc of all my father's songs that would appeal to children. So she's been marinated in his influence, as it were, from before she was born. We're also going to ensure that she sees his films –Willie Wonka, for example, and Dr Dolittle – so that he
continues to be a very important part of her life."
Sacha and his older sister Tara were still very young and led a peripatetic existence in London, New York and California after Joan and Anthony divorced in 1970 after seven years of marriage.
Fatherhood has, inevitably, re-ordered Sacha's priorities. "You read the newspapers, you watch the television news through the eyes of your child. And it can make the world seem a pretty scary place. But I like the adage, 'Don't
curse the darkness. Light a candle.' In other words, let's bring as many wonderful people into the world as possible and then, bit by bit, we can help make it a better place," he says.
A portrait painter with his own studio in Greenwich Village, Sacha undertakes private commissions but also paints "imaginary portraits" of people he has conjured up in his head. He is currently putting together a large collection of these paintings for a forthcoming exhibition in New York.
Ironically, one of his most recent works was of actor Christopher Reeve, who died last week. "Earlier this year," says Sacha, "I went up to see him in his home in Bedford, New York, and spent about six hours with him. We talked and talked as I photographed him from every conceivable angle. I wanted to paint three linked portraits of him, a triptych – a full-length portrait in his wheelchair plus two head shots.
"I found him to be witty, insightful and keen
to discuss his many projects. He was directing a production for HBO .He was also very optimistic about the future of stem-cell research that he hoped would one day alleviate his paralysis. He struck me as a heroic figure."
Sacha was putting the finishing touches to the portraits when news came through of Reeve's unexpected death.
"He told me that after the horse-riding accident his doctors had told him he'd be lucky if he lasted seven years. In the event, he lasted
nine. It's too sad that he'll never see the triptych. I was on the point of getting in touch to arrange a time I could show it to him. I'm now debating whether to exhibit it or make it available to the charity he supported."
Sacha originally met the Superman actor through his mother. "I met him several times before his accident," recalls Joan. "I particularly remember the occasion when he took the trouble to sign my younger daughter Katy's autograph book when she
was mad about the Superman films. He was intensely charming and kind."
Last year, Joan attended an event at the Christopher Reeve Foundation, dedicated to raising money for stem-cell research. "He was extraordinary. Obviously, he was in his wheelchair and yet he took the trouble to talk to almost everyone as he progressed down the red carpet at the beginning of the event. Later, he got on to the stage and made a speech so moving that we all had tears in our eyes. We gave him
a standing ovation. I was so shocked when I heard he'd died. He was so brave. It's a terrible loss."
But life, as Joan is the first to acknowledge, must go on. And the arrival of a new grandchild represents a reason for looking forward with hope. Although early days, does Sacha think about his daughter's future? "All the time," he admits. "Her near, middle and distant future. I'm preoccupied by it all.
"Because she's so beautiful and has such charisma,
it's tempting to imagine she might get caught up in the crazy world of flashbulbs and catwalks. In the end, though, the most we can hope for is that she keeps her feet on the ground and that she truly comprehends what really matters.
"Beyond that," says her besotted father, "she can have all the fun she wants." |
