>> Dynasty diva Joan Collins on beauty, her favourite cat fight and why gay men love her so

by MATTHEW HAYS

Full disclosure dictates that I must begin this article by outing myself. I am the biggest Joan Collins fan, ever. Even before she got her Dynasty gig in ’82—playing an evil bitch on the prime-time soap hit made her a household name—I loved her B-movie queen entries, everything from The Empire of the Ants to The Bitch.

But most love her as the nasty Alexis Carrington, a character dreamt up by TV execs who wanted a female version of the stinking rotten J.R. Ewing on Dallas. Several names were bandied about, including Liz Taylor’s, but Collins got the role, and immediately owned it. She played the scheming brunette to Linda Evans’s disarmingly sweet blonde, and the two battled it out in numerous cat fights. Collins soon came to personify both camp and the excesses of the Reagan era—her Alexis was greedy, calculating and kinda slutty. This also earned her gay-icon status, something we can all revel in this month, when the second season of Dynasty (where Collins made her debut) comes out on DVD. Collins has continued to act since the show went off the air, and also generated a flurry of tabloid headlines when she married a man approximately half her age.

This past winter, Collins reunited with her Dynasty co-star Evans for the North American tour of the play Legends. She has also just written another book, The Art of Living Well: Looking Good, Feeling Great (Sourcebooks, $24.95). The Mirror caught up with her to dish and to pose that age-old question: is glamour an in-born thing or is it learned behaviour?

Mirror: I understand that, despite the onscreen rivalry, you and Linda Evans were actually great friends.

Joan Collins: We were never great friends. We were friends. We never hung out and went to malls together and had girly lunches. Linda’s a very private person and spends a lot of time alone. After Legends, the show we did last winter, Linda would often just go home. But I’m more gregarious.

M: The image of what a beautiful woman is has changed so much over the years.

JC: Oh, totally. I love watching movies from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, when women looked like women. Look at Marilyn, she had a waist and a bosom and a bust. That’s what women are supposed to look like. These celebrity magazines suggest that we should all diet ourselves down ridiculously. I know a lot of the designers myself, and I think their ideal woman is hipless and bosomless and tall and skinny.

Party girl

M: You’ve done another book on beauty.

JC: Yes, The Art of Living Well. It’s not just about beauty, it’s about philosophy, health and exercise, all kinds of Martha Stewart-like advice on how to give a great wedding, how to throw a great children’s party. I’ve got three children—I must have thrown 30 children’s parties in my life. There’s also how to do a buffet, how to cook, how to dress on a budget. All wonderful advice, she said modestly (laughs).

M: You dress on a budget?

JC: No, I don’t, but I can. I can go out and buy fabulous things and look fabulous on very little money, if I want to.

M: You’re not just beautiful, Joan, you’re glamorous. I’m wondering, do you think glamour is something you’re born with or can you develop it?

JC: I think you can develop it. It’s something that comes with a certain amount of mystery. I think it has to do with not letting it all hang out. I think it also has to do with grooming. It has a lot to do with putting the right clothes together. I don’t think you can be glamorous with a shiny face and no lipstick. And lank hair. I have to say that I think that hair that is lank and rat’s-taily is not glamorous.

M: I would agree.

JC: Well good, Matthew! It’s true for men too.

Sex and the silly

M: Why do you think gay men have such a connection with you and your Dynasty character, Alexis?

JC: Me, a gay icon? (laughs)

M: Oh God, yes!

JC: I think that gay guys—and I have many, many gay friends—they like the clothes, the attitude, the ballsiness. Alexis had a man’s attitude. She took no prisoners in terms of sex. If she had to use her sexual wiles to get a business deal, she did that too. And she was tough in business, but looked good in a negligee.

M: Do you have a sex scene that is your favourite from throughout your career?

JC: Most of the sex scenes were hard to do as it was hard to stop laughing. Particularly the one in which I’m bonking Cecil Colby to death. [A landmark episode of Dynasty where, on their wedding night, Cecil dies while having sex with Collins.] His toupee kept sliding off. Everybody remembers that scene.

M: That was a racy scene. I remember when I saw it, I wondered how they got it on prime time television.

JC: We broke a lot of barriers. We had the gay son, and I think that was the first time a prime-time show had had a regular character like that. Alexis totally accepted him, unlike Blake, who was homophobic.

M: Did you have a favourite cat-fight scene between you and Linda?

JC: I liked the mud-slide one, because I didn’t have to do it! My stand in did it! But I think my favourite one was where I was dressed as Queen Elizabeth I and I can’t remember what Linda was dressed as, but we had a fight over a mud bath. That was very funny.

M: Are you ever weirded out by how fans have trouble telling you and Alexis apart?

JC: No, I’ve come to accept it. There’s nothing I can do about it. The one thing I will do is, if someone stops me on the street and says, “Hi Alexis!” I won’t answer them.

M: They do that? That’s pretty obnoxious.

JC: Mmm-hmm.

M: Your husband is quite a bit younger than you are, and the press has noted that. It’s a real double standard, because if it were a man of your age with a younger woman, no one would bat an eye.

JC: I agree. They do make a lot of things about Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones too though, probably more about them than they do Percy and me. They’ve totally accepted Percy and me now as a couple. I do look younger than my age, and I act and feel a lot younger too. It doesn’t bother us in the slightest degree, so I don’t know why anyone else should care. MYOB, as we say in England.