Joan Collins: The star for whom the world is one long red carpet trends now
Can it really be three decades since I first met Joan Collins? It was back in the late 1980s at the very posh Mayfair hair salon Michaeljohn.
My hairdresser, Derek, introduced us as she sashayed in, wreathed in fur and Hollywood glamour, heading towards the private celebrity salon downstairs. Joan and I had three things in common back then — Derek, big hair and gigantic shoulder pads.
She was at the height of her Dynasty fame — Alexis Carrington had made her a global star — yet she stopped to talk. When I told her I was a struggling journalist, she quipped: 'Keep at it darling. When all else fades, a woman can still keep writing.'
Having met the dame many times since, I now know that was characteristic of both her kindness and her razor-sharp wit. She is never cruel, just enormously funny and quick; a walking one-liner.
As she turns 90 today, Dame Joan has more energy than most decades younger.
Hers is a career that includes more than 50 films, dozens of performances in the West End and on Broadway, including in her own one-woman show, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Joan, pictured aged four, was born on May 23, 1933, in West London. As she turns 90 today, she has more energy than most decades younger
Dame Joan's (pictured in 1950s) is a career that includes more than 50 films, dozens of performances in the West End and on Broadway, including in her own one-woman show, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Dame Joan is never cruel, just enormously funny and quick; a walking one-liner. Pictured: Joan Collins in a Scene from the film 'The Stud' (1978)
She is still writing, too — her oeuvre includes columns for the Spectator magazine, a few best-selling novels and several autobiographies (and I do hope another volume is on the way) — but she is a star that's very far from fading. A regular on the party circuit, still a style icon, her status as National Treasure remains secure.
How does a woman who began her Hollywood career in the heyday of the casting couch aged 22 survive intact?
Perhaps it's her eternal optimism, captured brilliantly in her now infamous comment when asked about her four failed marriages: 'If life throws you a lemon, make lemonade.'
As a truly beautiful woman, she is even more beguiling in real life than on screen. She is more petite than you would imagine, curvaceous, with the legs of a chorus dancer. She has a fabulous mouth, chiselled cheekbones and those captivating emerald eyes.
She once commented of her earlier career: 'I had dark hair and green eyes and I suppose they said I smouldered.'
At 90 she still does. A friend of mine who holidays with her at her villa in St Tropez (she also has homes in London and LA) said she's just as lovely looking in the morning over breakfast. Without make-up, her porcelain skin is as delicate as Wedgwood.
One of the things I've loved most about Joan is she's a woman's woman, which is more than I can say of her sister Jackie. I went off Jackie when, at one of her book signings, she tried to hook up with my then fiance right in front of me, even giving him the key to her hotel room! No, Joan loves women, and I love her for it.
In a world where women are often horribly competitive with each other, especially on social media, sisterly solidarity is a trait worth celebrating. She's the first to admit that if there were a black belt in shopping, she'd have it, that she doesn't believe in dieting, or abstinence of any kind, for that matter. And yes, she drinks!
