{"id":251,"date":"2009-10-15T07:39:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T07:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theduanewells.com\/?p=251"},"modified":"2018-07-29T01:31:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T01:31:56","slug":"eternal-vixen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/eternal-vixen\/","title":{"rendered":"Eternal Vixen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Actress, author, and television icon Joan Collins, has never been a\u00a0shrinking violet. And after over 50 years in show business she\u00a0apparently has no intention of becoming one.<\/p>\n

Whether playing sex\u00a0kittens, historical heroines, or the villainous ex-wife of a certain\u00a0Denver-based oil baron, Joan Collins has developed a reputation in\u00a0Hollywood for portraying \u00a0brassy characters who\u00a0refuse to fade into the background. Despite the string of roles that bear her saucy imprimatur, it is perhaps her\u00a0iconic turn as vengeful, tough-as-nails Alexis Carrington Colby on the \u201980s television\u00a0phenomenon\u00a0Dynasty<\/em>\u00a0for which she is best known.\u00a0And now, just like those strong-willed,\u00a0irrepressible characters, Collins will once again take center stage and\u00a0boldly draw back the curtain on both her career and storied personal\u00a0life in\u00a0An Evening With Joan Collins,<\/em>\u00a0which makes its West Coast\u00a0debut on Friday, October 16, at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in\u00a0Long Beach, Calif. It is the first of what Collins hopes will be\u00a0many nights on this side of the pond for her one-woman show, which has\u00a0already toured the United Kingdom to rave reviews.<\/p>\n

Filled with anecdotes, photos, and video clips that trace the path of her eventful life,\u00a0An Evening With Joan Collins\u00a0<\/em>promises audiences an irreverent firsthand trip down the memory lane of\u00a0Collin\u2019s roller-coaster past \u2014 from her early pinup model days to\u00a0working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.\u00a0Collins promises to hold back very few of the dishiest moments from\u00a0her whirlwind, multifaceted show business journey, which began before\u00a0she even hit puberty.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first appeared on the stage when I was 9 years old. In fact, I\u00a0missed my cue and was soundly told off by the director,\u201d Collins\u00a0recalls with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Despite that somewhat inauspicious\u00a0beginning to her career, Collins obviously went on to become a\u00a0Hollywood leading lady, and it is this period of her life along with the\u00a0years that ensued that Collins opens up about in her one-woman show.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u00a0goes through my life as a young actress in England playing juvenile\u00a0delinquent parts and runaway girls and girls who get pregnant by\u00a0mistake,\u201d Collins says of her show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it goes into my life\u00a0in Hollywood when I did movies with Paul Newman, Richard Burton, Bette\u00a0Davis, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Gregory Peck and then my personal life\u00a0and marriages a bit. And then, of course, it goes into a lot \u2014 a lot \u2014 of\u00a0Dynasty.<\/em>\u00a0[Laughs<\/em>] And it is all illustrated with\u00a0photographs and home movies and clips from movies I did. It\u2019s about an\u00a0hour and 15 minutes of sheer entertainment. [Laughs<\/em>] I think anyone who likes this business is going to like this a lot.\u201d Not\u00a0surprisingly, Collins doesn\u2019t hold back when it comes to dissing on\u00a0Tinseltown A-listers, some of whom impressed her and many of whom\u00a0turned out to be major disappointments. In fact, Collins reveals that she had a\u00a0frosty relationship with Bette Davis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I did\u00a0The Virgin Queen\u00a0<\/em>with her, I and five other girls between the ages of 18 and 21 played\u00a0her ladies-in-waiting and she didn\u2019t like any of us, so she stomped\u00a0around the set being quite angry,\u201d Collins says of her experience\u00a0working with Davis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a scene with her and I was trying to\u00a0lace up her shoe … and she kept wriggling her foot so I couldn\u2019t do the\u00a0shoe up and finally she kicked me clear across the set! That really\u00a0annoyed our director, who said to me, \u2018You\u2019re thirty years younger than\u00a0her! Do up the old bag\u2019s shoes, for God\u2019s sake.\u2019\u201d So I did and I gripped\u00a0her foot … and she didn\u2019t mess with me much after that. But she wasn\u2019t\u00a0much of a fan of young ladies. She was irascible. That\u2019s hardly news to\u00a0anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the late actor Gregory Peck who inspired Collins to\u00a0open up about her life in such vivid detail onstage. \u201cAbout 10 years
\nago I was sitting next to him at a dinner. I worked with him and he was\u00a0a very good friend, and he told me he had been going around doing this,\u201d\u00a0Collins recounts. \u201cSo many people always asked me about my life, and I\u00a0have had a quite fascinating life, I guess. I mean, I\u2019ve been so busy\u00a0living it that I haven\u2019t really concentrated on thinking about how\u00a0fascinating it was. So I just sort of thought I\u2019d like to do [this\u00a0show]. And I love doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though she is forthright and candid\u00a0about much of her life in her new show, including her five marriages\u00a0and her drawn-out legal battle over a manuscript with Random House \u2014\u00a0an experience that she says nearly gave her an ulcer \u2014 Collins still\u00a0believes that some things should remain private.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that,\u00a0particularly in England, one of the reasons why people like me is that\u00a0they don\u2019t know everything about me,\u201d Collins says.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor\u00a0instance, I wouldn\u2019t dream of going on Facebook or Twitter. I have a\u00a0website that says a lot about my life and my career, but I don\u2019t do\u00a0\u2018Dear friends, I\u2019m going to the supermarket today because I need a dozen\u00a0eggs.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

At age 76, with 13 books, a library of film and\u00a0television appearances, and a string of awards and honors to her credit,\u00a0Collins says she has no intention of slowing down on her work or\u00a0cutting back on her jet-set life with her fifth husband, Percy Gibson,\u00a0to whom she has been married since 2002.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that, as\u00a0Auntie Mame said, \u2018Life\u2019s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving\u00a0to death,\u2019 Collins responds when asked why she continues to work so\u00a0hard at this point in her career, when many of her contemporaries have\u00a0bowed out of the game altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really believe in living\u00a0life to the fullest,, and as much as I love lying around on the sofa and\u00a0watching TV, I\u2019m not so keen on doing that all the time. I love acting,\u00a0I love writing, I love performing, and I\u2019ll just be doing that until a\u00a0cruel reality decides it\u2019s time for me to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published at <\/span>Advocate.com<\/span><\/a>. To read this post and more by Duane Wells at the Advocate, <\/span>click here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actress, author, and television icon Joan Collins, has never been a\u00a0shrinking violet. And after over 50 years in show business she\u00a0apparently has no intention of becoming one. Whether playing sex\u00a0kittens, historical heroines, or the villainous ex-wife of a certain\u00a0Denver-based oil baron, Joan Collins has developed a reputation in\u00a0Hollywood for portraying \u00a0brassy characters who\u00a0refuse to fade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1590,1588],"tags":[1133,1143,1164],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","category-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-interview","tag-hollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5562,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/5562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theduanewells.com\/staging3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}