Besides the memoirs Collins has written, she has also authored several best-selling novels such as Prime Time, Love & Desire & Hate, Infamous, Star Quality, and Misfortune's Daughters.
Collins currently holds The Guinness World Book of Records record for retaining the world's largest unreturned payment for an unpublished manuscript. In 1991 she delivered the 690-page manuscript of the novel Hell Hath No Fury to Random House, who paid her the agreed upon advance of $1.3 million. The publishing firm later demanded that Collins return the money because they claimed she failed to deliver completed books as per her contract.
Her contract with Random House required that she be paid even if her manuscripts weren’t published, so a February 29, 1996, ruling determined that she could keep the advance on the novel.
Collins was born on May 23, 1933, in London, to Joseph William Collins and Elsa Bessant. Her sister, Jackie Collins, is an accomplished author. She also has a brother named Bill Collins.
Joan Collins trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) with actors Sir Roger Moore and Sir Michael Caine. She began her London stage debut when she was nine in Ibsen’s A Dolls House at the Arts Theater. After graduating from RADA she was signed to an exclusive film contract by Rank Organization. She was just seventeen years old.
Collins made her feature movie debut in 1951’s Lady Godiva Rides Again where she played the part of a beauty contestant. Her first major theatrical role was as Sabina in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.
During the 1960s she made several notable guest appearances on American television on shows such as Star Trek, Batman, Mission Impossible, and Police Woman. In the 1970s she starred in film versions of two of her sister’s romantic novels, The Stud and The Bitch.
In 1981, Collins accepted a role on the soap opera Dynasty, produced by Aaron Spelling. Her role as scheming, vengeful Alexis Carrington made her into the highest paid actress on television at the time.
When she was fifty, Collins appeared in a seductive red dress on the cover of Playboy magazine.
Collins stayed with Dynasty for eight years. Then she focused her acting talents on theater and a few guest star appearances on shows like Roseanne, with Roseanne Barr; The Nanny, with Fran Drescher; and Will & Grace, with Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally, and Sean Hayes.
In 1992, she debut on Broadway in an adaptation of Noel Coward’s Private Lives. In 1997, she guest starred in six episodes of another of Aaron Spelling’s shows, prime time soap opera Pacific Palisades. The same year she was presented with the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contribution to the arts.
In 2002, she appeared in a limited run on the legendary daytime soap opera Guiding Light. In early 2006, she presented her one-woman show An Evening with Joan Collins on tour. It was directed by her husband Percy Gibson and details the highs and lows of her career and life.
Collins' husband, Gibson, is thirty-two years Collins’ junior. The two married on February 17, 2002, at Claridge’s Hotel in London. Before her marriage to Gibson, Collins had been married four times. Her first husband tried to sell her to an Arab sheik, so she divorced him on her twenty-third birthday.
YUDDY
