Joan Collins ‘unscripted’ in Southend

JOAN Collins is giving me heart palpitations – and not for the first time. This time, the effect is very different from the one she had on the hormonal schoolboy staring at the grass-skirted beauty slinking across white sands in 1957 movie, Our Girl Friday.

The actor is speaking from her home in the south of France, but there’s a lightning storm playing out. And with every crack of thunder the line goes dead. Now, the idea of interviewing the actor behind Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington already incites trepidation. (Dame Joan reputedly doesn’t suffer fools.) But if a good celebrity interview depends on establishing rapport, my chances here are about the size of the bikini she wore in Girl Friday.

And there’s the question of how to address the 83-year-old. Does she wish to be Dame Joan, the title she earned last year for services to charity?

“You can call me Joan,” she says in soft, but clipped tones, perhaps a remnant from her Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) training. And she’s immediately warm.

But then the line disappears. Drat. Will she slide off for a morning coffee? Thankfully, Collins calls back. And the line cuts out again. More anxious dialling. We’re reconnected. But are we?

Try an easy question. Her forthcoming show, which includes a Southend date at the Clifftown Theatre on September 8, will invite questions from the audience. Isn’t she worried about being quizzed by nosy, cheeky Southenders? You can just imagine them asking, “What was it like to date Warren Beatty?” Or even, “Why were you a Brexiteer, Dame Joan?”

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I were trepidatious,” she says. “It’s unscripted, so I will go out there on stage will wing it. It should be fun.”

Dame Joan adds laughing: “I like a challenge.”

She certainly does. Growing up in London the granddaughter of stage performers and daughter of a showbiz agent, an acting life was inevitable for Collins. After RADA, small theatre roles soon led the striking young actress to a Rank Pictures contract, followed by a move to Hollywood, aged just 22. The young Brit lit up the screen and rivalled Elizabeth Taylor and Jean Simmons for the great movie goddess roles. But Collins had more than good cheek bones, long legs and plenty of talent; she had a twinkle in her eye which beguiled. Even playing a nun in the 1957 movie Sea Wife, Collins looked hotter than the Jamaican beaches where the movie was filmed.

There were darker times, of course. Her first husband, fading film star Maxwell Reed, raped her, after drugging her drink. Second husband actor-singer Anthony Newley’s best performance was all too often Relentless Philanderer. Partners such as Peter Holm came and went.

However, if there’s a running thread in Dame Joan’s love life, it’s perhaps that she tried exceptionally hard to make her marriages work. As a teenager, Collins was repeatedly told by her father, the showbiz agent Joe Collins, that she’d never make anything of herself. Was his legacy her need to placate the men in her life? Before she answers there’s a crack of lighting and the line goes dead. Again. At least I hope it was lightning which disengaged us and not the tone of the question.

But Dame Joan returns: “You have to understand I was brought up in a generation where women were subservient towards men,” she explains. “It was expected that women did everything. I’m not saying my mother was a slave, but at the time the man’s word was law, the man was the boss, the breadwinner. The women stayed at home and had the kids.

“When I was 18 and under contract with Rank (Pictures) I did a magazine interview. I was asked, “How are you going to do all the cooking and cleaning in your home?’ I replied, ‘I won’t do any cooking at cleaning, I’ll be at the studios for 12 hours a day.’ Well, the headline appeared, and I will never forget it because it ran: ‘I Will Do No Cooking And Cleaning Says Joan ... who is not a real woman.’ Can you believe it? I was castigated because I chose my own path in life and showed I wouldn’t kowtow to any man.”

Collins did work hard at relationships, perhaps learning along the way that sometimes you can work too hard. Her autobiography Passion For Life reveals for example that the actor Laurence Harvey just wouldn’t take their relationship onto the next level (ie onto a double bed) although she didn’t realise at the time that he was gay. After divorcing Reed, the young actor had a fling with playboy Arthur Loew Jnr, fell for married producer George Englund, and dated millionaire Nicky Hilton. She followed her heart. And sometimes her libido.

But what her Hollywood tales illuminate most is the selfish, chauvinistic behaviour so redolent of the 1960s. Warren Beatty, she has said, continually derided the movie scripts the young Collins was sent, as a way of keeping her around him. And sexism was rife in the industry. Was she offered the range of roles her talent merited? Did she want to play Joan of Arc?

“Sir John Gielgud told me once, ‘An actor is often a prisoner of his own physicality. And because of the way you look you will always be cast in certain roles. But if you want to play different roles you will have to change your physiognomy’.” Even if Collins had shaved her head and had her front teeth pulled, directors would have ignored her for the gritty roles. They wanted her beauty. Yet, some female Hollywood actors also gave their successful counterparts a hard time. In the 1955 film The Virgin Queen, the imperious Bette Davis kicked Collins, her shoelace-tying handmaiden, right across the floor.

“It didn’t happen a lot, to be honest,” says Collins. “Most women I worked with were great. And Bette Davis was ...” At this point, the lightning bolt strikes again. Perhaps the ghost of Davis demanding a call-back? Oh well. The price you pay for living in gorgeous south of France. I call back. It’s engaged. Call again. We connect. Great.

We are still on the subject of casting against type. “Casting directors are myopic but they also have their favourites. I’m sure I’m on their list, but I’m also sure Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren or Jane Fonda will be on the list too. And I won’t necessarily be on top of the list. But that’s fine because I know exactly where I stand on the totem pole of showbiz.”

But has she tried not to be cast as the beauty? Did she, for example, ever consider playing the tragic, tormented, aged Norma Desmond in the Sunset Boulevard stage show? “Yes, I did, actually. Andrew Lloyd Webber talked to me once about playing Norma but although I can sing – in fact I open this new stage show singing songs from a record I once made with Anthony Newley that was never released – I couldn’t do it in Sunset. I told Andrew I just couldn’t handle the vocal. I couldn’t do eight performances a week and sing five songs.”

In fact, Collins has taken on plenty of unexpected roles. She revealed great comic timing in Noel Coward plays, and showed a wonderful sense of self-deprecation in The Flintstones movie (2000) as Pearl Slaghoople. Not so long ago she stretched out on a bed, rather incongruously, alongside Johnny Vegas in ITV hit, Benidorm.

Last year she was in The Time Of Their Lives, a Thelma & Louise type romp co-starring Pauline Collins. “I played a washed-up actress who escapes from a retirement home,” she says excitedly. “And in the beginning I look very much like a washed-up actress. I was so pleased to get this role, because I feel I’ve so often been passed up for roles because of the way I look.”

Would the grande dame consider smaller-scale theatre, a stint at the Donmar for example? “You know, I’m way beyond proving anything to anybody,” she says, gear-shifting delightfully into Dame voice. “I am what I am, and I know what I can do. But I have done a lot of plays in the past 10 years.”

Indeed. And she has picked up great notices for her Cowards and even her pantos. Joan Collins has nothing to prove. But there was a time when the actor had to prove to producers she could pull in an audience. During the lean 1970s she decided to take the bull by the horns and star in the rather raunchy films The Stud and The Bitch (both based on novels by her sister, Jackie Collins), in the process revealing a little more than the twinkle in her eye.

Yet, didn’t she later turn down a chance to appear on-stage in The Graduate, in the classic Anne Bancroft role? “I had meetings about doing it, yes, but I said to producer John Reid there was no way I’d go on the stage naked. Yes, I was assured the lighting would conceal lots but I maintained that after I did Playboy at 49 years old there was no way I was taking my clothes off again.”

She didn’t have to. The career renaissance kicked off in the 1980s when Collins landed the US soap Dynasty, creating an iconic character and a rather healthy bank account. In many ways, Alexis Carrington was the sum of her career experience distilled into a single role.

“I think I brought this certain attitude to Alexis. And I think this is why a lot of women came to love that character. You know, a woman in business, whether in showbiz or in a factory, has to be better than a man, because she is judged not just in her ability but in her looks and attitude. Even today, women are judged more harshly than men. Alexis kicked against that.”

Joan Collins, however, doesn’t concern herself with the roles that could have been.“Really I don’t have regrets. Life is too short to be moaning about something that could have happened.

“I embrace every day the chance to make a new entry in the diary, whether it’s having a good cup of coffee, a swim, going shopping or Skyping my grandchildren.”

Does she believe her attitude of embracing every new day with a tight hug has given her longevity? “I think so. But I think genes have a lot to do with. My sister, up until the day she died (Jackie Collins passed away last September) looked very young.”

Dame Joan’s soft voice betrays her emotion. “I’m really sad about the death of my sister. It’s still so sad. I miss her every day. And I have pictures of her all over the house.”

She adds: “There is so much tragedy in the world I think it behoves those who have a good life to enjoy it.”

Indeed. Does she feel she had to go through the incredible journey, the challenges, the disappointments, before she found real happiness with Percy, her Peruvian-born soulmate?

“I don’t know the answer to that,” she says. “What I do know is that life is not a bowl of cherries, sometimes it’s a bowl of cherry pits. And most people’s lives have highs and lows. Everybody has sadness and pain. Very few people, for example, continue to be married for 60 years. Life changes.”

The lighting flashes have ceased and Collins reflects again on her relationships. “Sometimes I didn’t choose the right men, although Tony Newley and Ron Kass [they married in 1972], who gave me children, seemed right at the time.” Kass became an avid drug user. “That’s why I’m so vehemently anti-drugs,” she maintains. “They could have destroyed me. I was saved at the 11th hour by Dynasty, you know. I was broke. And then I stupidly married the Swede.” [Peter Holm, whom she married in 1985, demanded a $2.5m settlement and got just $80k, in 1986].

“But I’ve had my share of playing around as well,” she adds, with a little wicked laugh, “although we don’t talk about that ... yet I may do on stage.”

The Hollywood legend laughs a lot, I discover. She also remains as determined as the 15-year-old private schoolgirl who announced that one day, she’d become a film star. And she’s a grafter, whether working to pay the mortgage or for the many charities she represents. “No-one has ever given me anything. And I’ve always paid my taxes,” she maintains.

Then adds, laughing: “I’ve never even applied for a bus pass.” Good gracious, Joan. We can’t have screen legends rummaging in big handbags for bus passes. “No!” she laughs.

Some interviewers have wondered if she ever gets to just be Joan Collins, and escape from the showbiz machine. But my impression is that she’s Joan Collins all the time. There are, however, many sides to her character. The person on the end of the phone is a devoted mother, a hugely supportive friend, a wife deeply in love with a man who loves her back. And sometimes she’s an actor who still acts (and looks) like a movie star. She’s also entirely engaging; it’s not hard to understand why Captain Kirk fell in love with her in a 1967 episode of Star Trek.

Sadly, the lighting interruptions have short-circuited a planned question about whether Joan Collins still does her party piece, the splits, on stage. Let’s hope so. But regardless, you just know her theatre show, which she proclaims to be her last, will be a hoot.

Joan Collins Unscripted will be at the theatre venue in Station Road, on Saturday September 8 at 7:30pm.

Visit southendtheatres.org.uk for booking details.