Joan Collins
Born May 23, 1933 — United Kingdom
Dame Joan Collins is a British actress who personified Hollywood glamour across seven decades. A contract player at 20th Century Fox in the 1950s, she appeared in over sixty films before finding her defining role as Alexis Carrington Colby in the American soap opera Dynasty (1981–1989) — a character of magnificent, scheming venom that made her one of the most recognizable faces on television worldwide and a figure inseparable from the aesthetic of the 1980s.
From Mayfair to Hollywood
Joan Henrietta Collins was born on May 23, 1933 in Paddington, London, into a theatrical family — her father Joe Collins was a theatrical agent and her younger sister Jackie Collins became a celebrated novelist. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made her film debut as a teenager. At nineteen she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox and moved to Hollywood, where she was marketed as a British sex symbol and appeared in a string of films including Land of the Pharaohs (1955), Island in the Sun (1957), and the original Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958). In 1960 she was considered for the role of Cleopatra, which ultimately went to Elizabeth Taylor. Her 1950s and 1960s career remained solid without achieving the superstardom Hollywood had expected from her.
Dynasty and the Definition of an Era
Collins joined Dynasty in 1981 as Alexis, the scheming ex-wife of oil magnate Blake Carrington. The role was a revelation: playing a character of magnificent appetite, devastating wit, and unstoppable scheming, Collins became the show's defining presence and one of 1980s television's iconic figures. She won a Golden Globe in 1983. Dynasty was watched by an estimated 250 million people worldwide at its peak. Alexis Carrington remains one of television's great villains, and Collins's performance was physical as well as theatrical — the costumes, the shoulder pads, the entrances. Away from the role she has written extensively, including novels and memoirs that reflect her characteristic candor about Hollywood, beauty, and age. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2015.
Did You Know?
Collins became engaged to Warren Beatty in the early 1960s, a relationship that ended after several years. Beatty reportedly gave her an ultimatum to choose between her career and marriage; she chose her career. She went on to five marriages, none to Beatty. Her fifth and current marriage, to theatrical producer Percy Gibson (whom she married in 2002, when she was 68 and he was 36), has been widely celebrated as a genuinely happy one.
Legacy
Joan Collins has remained active in entertainment into her nineties, appearing in Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story and Ratched, and continuing to write and give interviews with characteristic vivacity. She represents a form of enduring star quality — the refusal to fade modestly, the acceptance of full glamour as a public posture — that has made her a figure of admiration for multiple generations. Her decades-long career, spanning the film studio system, television's golden era, and the streaming age, is the complete arc of 20th-century entertainment.