Marc Baker meets the one and only Joan Collins…
Ageism…
Every actress under the age of 35 experiences ageism. I was cast in a TV role once when I was 39. My agent told them I was 32 because I looked it. I got the role but at the end the producer said, “My God you are 39. Had we known that, we would have never have cast you.”
I said, ‘why not’, and he said that he wanted a 33 year old. These days it is [about] how old you are and they can just look on Google.
Longevity…
I have no idea why I have lasted. I don’t really know. I have always worked hard. I never wanted to be a star. I always wanted to be an actress. I never particularly liked the word ‘star’, anyway. I just want to act.
Reality TV is killing show business…
Today the business is terribly over-crowded. Actors make a pittance wage. About sixty people go for roles now and competition is tough. All TV networks want to do now is put out reality TV and they have found that reality stars can now be as popular as actresses, and they can be had for much, much cheaper wages.
Fighting with Bette Davis…
I starred with her in my first film, The Virgin Queen. Bette Davis was utterly terrifying. She was absolutely. She did not only scare me, but she scared the other four girls who played her ladies-in-waiting. She used to stalk around smoking heavily and wore tight corseted gowns and her mood was not always the best.
In one scene I had to kneel down and tie up her shoe. But in the first two takes it wriggled and wriggled, and in the third take it just kicked me right across the floor.
I was upset about that and the director blamed me for getting it wrong. So, for the final take I wedged her leg between my legs and tied her shoe up while stressing my lines to her. After that she never crossed swords with me again.
Quite frankly, some of my films were not that good as they were filmed in cinema scope. You hardly had close-ups and it was just like being in the cinema. People looked liked sticks, they might as well been on TV.
Ageism in Hollywood…
My next movie was one Marylin Monroe was supposed to do, but it was felt that she was too old at 30 and could not do it. This taught me my first lesson in Hollywood. But I did it to get my face known to the American public.
“I heard the producer say to the receptionist on the phone “Joan who?” So I got a car number plate which said Joan Who.”
Hating working with Bing Crosby…
I was cast alongside him and Bob Hope for the Road to Hong Kong movie. I was 29 in this film and Bing was 59. It was another taste of ageism in Hollywood. Bob was great fun, but Bing was a grumpy chauvinistic man and he smoked terribly. He was smoking a pipe all the time and it was a bit like kissing an ashtray. He kept himself to himself. He did not talk to the other actors or the crew. He was not enamored with people.
Hollywood then and now…
Hollywood then was run by studios and they had major figures in charge. They kept a tight grip on their stars who were all under contract. The studios had control of what they did and their products, and were not conglomerates. They had autonomy.
I had no say in what I did as I was there for seven years. I wished I had played Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. I think I could have been good at that, or been Cleopatra.
Today, Hollywood studios are run by big business. They are in the business of making money and their core audience is between 14 and 26, and that is why there are so many movies that are out there that I don’t want to see. And there is no one person now who has any say. The heads of studios now change every day.
Having kids and her later career…
After three or four years I got bored of being mummy dearest so I started working again. I was in Star Trek, too, and my daughter loved it. She told me to do it as people go to the moon in it!
Show business is a tough business and you have to be tough to survive. I went to auditions and I was turned away. I went once and I heard the producer say to the receptionist on the phone “Joan who?” So I got a car number plate which said Joan Who.
I was rejected but I found that I could not take it seriously. I found it hard to get work but my friend Michael Caine told me that it was difficult for actors to make a living from just being an actor, and he told me that I needed to find something else and another string to my bow. He had his restaurants, so I started writing novels and doing the odd bit of interior decorating then I got my big lucky break on Dynasty.
You could say that was the pinnacle of my career, playing the uber bitch Alexis Colby. She was a very interesting character who I loved playing. But I got sick of people asking me constantly ‘are you really like Alexis?’ It was like the same old record going round and round. My friend Henry Winkler told me it would take five years for people to forget, but it has never gone away.
Early ambitions…
From the age of eight I wanted to be an actress. I never wanted to be an actor. I never liked that phrase. Female actress is a beautiful word.
But when I approached the subject with my father he was totally against the idea. He was horrified. He said to me that most actors are vulgar, common and coarse. So here I am.
My father was an agent so he knew the perils of the profession. I did once train to be a ballerina but I soon realised that I was not quite cut out for that. I also wanted to become a detective because I used to watch a lot of shows on TV like Dick Barton Special Agent. I also had early ambitions to become a fashion designer or an interior decorator, but after I thought about it for a while I decided that the stage was where I wanted to be.
Going to RADA…
At the audition I was in such a paradox. I was in so much fear I could not move or hardly speak. I was totally in awe. There were these judges in front of us judging who would make it and who wouldn’t. But I chose to do a piece from Cleopatra and another which showed off my American accent and I got in… and then I went on holiday to the French Riviera… as you do.
I could not believe my luck that I got in. There were so many young people there competing against me. I loved being there. Each term we dissected various classical plays, and at the end of each term we had to perform in front of the student body and they were hostile against us. It was here that my father did a U turn and decided to put some money to back me.
He put some money behind me and I started working at a theatre in Maidstone, Kent where I earned £3.10 per week where I worked as the assistant’s assistant stage manager and played maids in various plays. I was still only 16 and I had stars in my eyes and I was living the dream.
I remember I was in a play once and my role was to pull the curtains shut, and because I was only 16 I shouted out “I can’t get it up!”
The leading lady then turned on me and said: “You stupid little fool. You will never make it in this business.”
I was terribly upset about this and hit the pub and had a gin. But I realised how lucky I was to be working and that I was not cut out to be a housewife and do all the cooking, cleaning and hoovering.
Then one day my life changed when I was out looking for props when I heard a shopkeeper talking about me he said: “That young stage manager woman is the daughter of a rich man, born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Can’t do a bloody thing.” I was so completely mortified that I decided that I would get my own jobs and make my own money in this world without daddy.
I did a string of modeling for teenage magazines. I was even on the cover of a magazine called Good Taste. Anyway, an agent spotted me and asked if I wanted to be in films. To me, I wanted to be a serious actress on stage. I did not want to be in films. I thought there was no fame, on stage I just thought film stars were fake, glamour and make up.
But my parents told me that it was a chance in a million for a 17 year old girl. They said to me most girls would give their eye teeth to be a movie star and told me that was it. After 18 months at RADA I left.
Getting into films…
I joined J Athur Rank when I was 17 and was contracted to them for five years and was earning £100 a week. It was great being in films, but it also grounded me how to work with the press. I learned how to not let the good things or bad things they said go to my head. It also taught me not to lie to them.
I made several films for Rank but after a few years I was dropped like a sack of coal and sold to 20th Century Fox, but my dad told me that I would not survive on my fresh face and that they should pay me enough money to appreciate me and it worked. I held out and I received the phenomenal sum of $1,250 a week and there I was in Hollywood where everyone’s dreams come true… so they say.
I arrived there at the end of the golden age of cinema when the gilt was beginning to tarnish. In my first week I saw the most iconic faces ever to grace the silver screen. But they were just normal people. I arrived there when films were in a major crisis as it was when TV was beginning to really rivet audiences. The only things that films could offer audiences that TV could not was sex and violence.
• One Night With Joan is at the Leicester Square Theatre, 14th–18th March 7.30pm (plus 3pm on Sunday). Box office: 08448 733433 and www.leicestersquaretheatre.com
