She's very jewelled, very coiffured, very dressed-up, very sharp-witted!" That's Joan Collins describing her upcoming role as Alexandra Spaulding in a six-month -- maybe more -- stint on daytime's "Guiding Light" soap. (Did you expect her to play an IQ-challenged, down-at-the-heel, truck-stop waitress?
Joan, who once ruled the night time airwaves as "Dynasty's" super-vixen, Alexis Carrington Colby, has taken this somewhat surprising career turn for a reason -- "Guiding Light" is taped in Manhattan. Miss Collins' divine hubby, Percy Gibson, will be working in Manhattan as the stage manager of "My Old Lady," starring Sian Phillips. (Miss Phillips played the devious Livia in "I Claudius," which was very much the "Dynasty" of antiquity.)
And the happy pair intends to "home base" in New York City -- permanently. Joan has given up her spacious apartment in L.A. and decided that New York is where she'd rather be. The city suits her energy, vitality and dash. Hazy, lazy Hollywood is really too laid back for a woman like Joan. | 
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"I love New York!" she told me, "though I must say, today's weather isn't a treat. England is tropical compared to this." (We chatted during
a recent chilly, torrential downpour.) Joan will keep her London home and her villa in St. Tropez, where she annually summers, but she is digging in and preparing to take the biggest bite possible of the Big Apple. Her "Guiding Light" role is, according to her, "dishy, full of fun and great dialogue -- the woman comes back to town to overthrow her brother's business empire." Joan is really on home turf with that kind of setup. Fans remember her endless business battles
with "Dynasty's" Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) -- "I hate you, Blake, I hate you. And I'm going to get even with you if it's the last thing I do!" Collins makes her first appearance on "GL" on Sept. 23.
But the actress has her sights set higher than "Guiding Light," as much fun as that may be. Joan wants Broadway. And she should get it. She was a hugely amusing Amanda in a Broadway revival of "Private Lives" a few years back, and,
indeed, it is her lighter side that she'd like to showcase on the boards. (Joan was hilarious and the best thing in last year's otherwise disappointing TV movie "These Old Broads" with Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine and Elizabeth Taylor.)
"It's not so much that I mind the public perception of me as a sexy, conniving vixen, but I always thought Alexis in 'Dynasty' was really rather funny. I certainly approached it that way. At its best, the show had a tremendous amount of
tongue-in-cheek humor, which I relished." Hey, how about a revival of Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" for Collins? But if Joan wants to go serious, I bet she'd be a wicked Eleanor of Aquitaine in "The Lion in Winter" or a Lady Macbeth who could convince anybody to commit murder. I've always felt Joan Collins, for all her celebrity, remains an untapped resource.
WHILE JOAN TOILS in the daytime vineyard and searches for a good stage role, she'll also occupy
herself with the November publication of her latest and most ambitious novel, "Star Quality," the Sept. 17 wedding of her artist son Sacha to jewelry designer Angela Tassoni (she will wear some of her daughter-in-law's creations on "GL") and the decorating of her new apartment, which she says will never end. "I love to decorate! I'll be haunting shops all over the city, looking for just the right fabric, art, furniture." Will Joan Collins at Pier 1 become
the city's latest tourist enticement?
As for her novel, which blasts off with a big book party at the Chambers Hotel Nov. 12, it tells the story of four actresses, all related to one another, an epic that runs from the 1900s to the turn of the century. "This book required more effort and research than I've ever done previously. One of my heroines starts out as a maid in Belgravia. I had to find out what conditions were, when certain appliances were invented, all sorts of things.
And I loved doing research for the actress in the '40s era -- I've always loved films from that time, and that character is sort of an amalgam of Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr and Ava Gardner, women who fascinated me as I grew up."
AND THERE'S MORE! Joan Collins is not a woman who simply waits for opportunity to come knocking. She nudges opportunity through the door. The star is also working on a movie script about two feuding actresses titled "Best of Enemies." Is Joan
writing in a role for herself? "Naturally, darling, whatever else would be the point?"
When I expressed some astonishment at her output, ambition and positive gung-ho attitude lo these many years since they sealed her up in the pyramid in "Land of the Pharaohs," Joan said, "My dear, this is what life is about, taking everything you can from it, making the best of what you have, making what you have better . I'm a totally forward-thinking person. I feel
inordinately blessed with everything I have, personally and professionally, and always optimistic about what is around the corner."
Joan Collins -- once she had career problems and made lemonade from lemons. Then she turned lemonade into champagne. What a woman. |
