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CBS
- December 28th, 2000
Dynasty's
Queen
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Joan Collins has played them all
CBS:
For nearly 50 years Joan Collins has made a career of being a most
difficult woman.
"No, no you idiot, when I ordered a shiatsu, I meant a massage,
not a dog," she is overheard saying.
"I don't exactly suffer fools gladly," she explains.
And in her latest project, the TV movie These Old Broads, she appears
with Hollywood legends Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine and Elizabeth
Taylor. At age 67, she's still doing what she does best, as Correspondent
Troy Roberts reports.
"I have these
various scenes with various men in the film in which I have to, well,
one I s--- to death," she says. "Mine's quite a flashy
role."
Flashy has been her bread and butter (witness Joseph and the Technicolor
Dreamcoat), though she's played the vamp and the temptress,(The Stud)
and the vixen (The Bitch).
"But I think I play b----es pretty well," Collins says.
She is arguably the most popular difficult lady in television history.
She was Dynasty's much married, much hated Alexis Carrington.
"You heard him, Blake; you're finished; you've lost everything,
and I now own this house," she declared on Dynasty.
Alexis could be considered the role of a life time.
"Take this junk and your blond tramp and get out of my
home," she also declared on Dynasty.
"She was the perfect vixen," says Dynasty creator and
producer Aaron Spelling. "It's just the way she delivered lines.
It's the way she could be very b----y. But then you would smile at her
b----iness and you would root for her."
People confuse her with the character, she concedes. "It's not
irritating," she says. "It's sad really. But I
understand it."
It would be easy to confuse Collins with her fictional alter ego; they
have the same expensive tastes.
If she could be tempted by something it would be "a nice big pot
of caviar," she says.
Then there's her mercurial temperament and failed marriages, four of
them, to be exact.
Has she soured on love? "You think I want to become a nun? she
asks. "My mother told me that all men are rats and those that
aren't are boring," she says.
What is the key to surviving in a town where they eat their own? "Not
giving a s--- about what they think," she declares.
But behind that façade her friends and family see a different side.
"She's had the most appalling obstacles to overcome,"
says her son, artist Sacha Newley.
"She has a vulnerable side; she doesn't show it off much; it's
really reserved for those who are very close to her," he says.
Collins was a rising young star in England when Hollywood came calling
in the mid-1950s. She signed a multiyear contract at 20th Century Fox
and went on to appear in more than 50 movies, but that perfect part,
that career-defining role, would elude her for years.
"I did a lot of stuff that wasn't very good," Collins
admits.
"I was queen of the horror films in the mid-'70s," she
adds.
So Dynasty saved her financially and professionally? "God, yes,
absolutely," she says.
A decade after her phenomenal success with Dynasty, she hasn't found
that next great role.
"You cannot rely on this profession to live on, so you have to
have another string to your bow which is why I started writing,"
she says.
Like her sister, the hugely popular author Jackie Collins, Joan Collins
writes books chronicling the jet-set society in often lurid sexual
situations. Many of hers have become bestsellers.
Now in her late sixties, Joan Collins' 14-year relationship with art
dealer Robin Hurlstone, several years her junior, is the stuff romantic
novels are made of, but she refuses to talk about him.
"Yeah, two decades," she says of the age difference.
What does he bring to the relationship, Troy Roberts asked.
"Oh, get out of here! I told you I wasn't going to discuss
it," she replies. "So naughty."
She is more forthcoming, though, about her other love: 2-year-old
granddaughter Miel. "This, of course, is my little baby,"
Joan Collins says.
In Los Angeles, 48 Hours spent part of the day shopping with her.
"When you said you wanted to go shopping, I was thinking Harry
Winston, Hermes," says Roberts.
"This is called Toys R Us," she says. "This is
where you go to get presents for children."
"So what I'm looking for - you're going to help me - is a
computer for a 2-year-old," she says.
"I can't believe the hideousness of this one," she
declares of a doll.
"She manages to blend being a great mother, a great grandmother,
and her career," says her daughter, British TV host Tara Newley. "I'm in awe of her."
"I just think that she's a brilliant gran. And she'd hate me for
saying gran," Tara Newley adds."We don't necessarily
use the word gran," she explains.
During her frequent visits to London, the reluctant grandmother has
clearly warmed to the role.
What has been the best advice she's given her daughter about parenting?
"I'm not very good at giving advice,...really I'm not. You do
the best you can," she says. "You know what is a good
mother? It's just care, health and love."
While Joan Collins has not yet been anointed a great dame by Hollywood
standards, there may be no greater role than the one she's been living.
What makes a great dame?
"I suppose a mixture of strength, age, resilience, wiseness,"
she says.
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