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Joan Collins (born May 23, 1933Joan Collins is a British actress and best selling author. Her younger sister is Jackie Collins, a famous novelist; and her much-younger brother is William Collins, an estate agent.

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Collins was born in London, England to Joseph William "Will" Collins (a South African-born Jewish talent agent) and Elsa Bessant (an English mother). She was educated at the Francis Holland School and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) with others actors such as Sir Roger Moore and Sir Michael Caine.

At the age of 17 she was signed to the J. Arther Rank Film Company, a highly profitable English studio and charm school. While starring in a handful of Rank productions in 1952 Collins married British screen icon Maxwell Reed, whom she divorced in 1956 on her twenty-third birthday after he attempted to sell her to an Arab sheik. During this time she appeared in scores of forgettable films while carrying on much talked about romances with Conrad Hilton Jr., Dennis Hopper, Ryan O'Neal, Terence Stamp, Sydney Chaplin, and Warren Beatty.

The gossip mills set ablaze when Collins walked away from Hollywood and a successful career in the early 1960's when she married Anthony Newley, an award winning singer, actor and film composer. With Newley she had two children, a daughter, Tara (now a British television broadcaster) and a son, Sacha (who, in present day is a highly regarded artist). However, all was not well in the Newley marriage with infidelity on both sides leading to the couples divorce in 1970.

In 1972 Collins married her third husband, Ron Kass, who had been the president of Apple Records during the reign of The Beatles. During their marriage Collins had her third and final child, a daughter, Katyana (a photographer). In 1980 Collins's world was turned upside down when Katy was struck by a speeding car, leaving the young child in a coma. During this horrific time Collins and her husband bought a trailer and parked it in the hospital parking lot in order to be as close to their daughter as possible. Their persistence paid off when Katyana emerged from her coma a few months later although it would take years for her to fully recover. Unfortunately, like her other two marriages, Collins's third attempt at matrimony failed as she and Kass divorced in 1983 as he battled substance abuse, although they remained very close until his death, from cancer, in 1986 as Collins was riding the crest of her super stardom on .

In 1985, Collins became a bride for the fourth time when she married Swedish singer Peter Holm in a quickie ceremony in Las Vegas. The marriage lasted a year and the divorce proceedings lasted just as long with an embarrassing media circus hitting its peak when Holm's mistress burst out of her blouse on the stand, to thunderous laughter from Collins.

Blistered from her last foray into wedded bliss and with winding down after a decade Collins left Los Angeles and returned to London where she lived with much younger art dealer Robin Hurlstone for over a decade. On February 29, 1996, Collins won a U.S. $2 million suit with Random House for breach of contract. Humiliated by the claims that she was over the hill and not a talented writer, Collins felt she was on the losing end of the case until, on the advice of her loved ones, she became highly confrontational and emotional on the witness stand, newspapers around the globe hailed the court case as "her finest performance."

In 2001 Collins and Hurlstone ended their relationship and Collins struck up a romance with theatrical company manager Percy Gibson, a man thirty-two years her junior. They married on February 17th, 2002 at Claridge's Hotel in London. After decades of flirting with British politics on May 24, 2004, Collins joined the UK Independence Party. [1] In October 2004, Collins stated she was not a supporter, but rather a patron of the party. In early 2005, Collins comented that she had rejoined the Conservative Party, stating, "The Labour Party doesn't care about the British people." [2] In addition, after writing several articles for the UK newspaper in 2005, it has been rumoured that Collins was approached by several members of the Conservative Party in hopes of luring her to run for Parliament.

As of 2005 Collins is a "Glam-ma" three times over. A woman in perpetual motion, evergreen star Joan Collins lives happily between her luxury homes in New York, London and the south of France.

In 1951, She made her feature debut as a beauty contest entrant in Lady Godiva Rides. In the early 1950s, she did double duty by posing for pin-up photos and acting in B-movies in Britain. After mild success, she was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1954 as their answer to Elizabeth Taylor. However, after her youthful and highly splashy career as a sultry starlet, Collins became known more for her personal affairs with leading men such as Warren Beatty than her on-screen achievements. After losing such high-profile roles as (Collins was cast when Elizabeth Taylor fell ill, then dumped upon Taylor's recovery), Collins turned to other ventures. Notable guest appearances on American TV during the 1960s included . In the mid-to-late 1970s, while in a career slump that included guest-starring on several forgettable television series.

. The films, like the books which inspired them, were trashy, full of nudity and raunchy sex scenes. Both films were smash hits in England, becoming the most profitable films since the James Bond series.

Aside from this brief camp notoriety, Collins was again a back number until she was successfully relaunched as a powerful sex symbol and icon of independence in her late 40s with her role as to become the No. 1 U.S. TV show in the early 1980s, and she became the highest-paid actress on television at the time.

She also appeared on the cover of magazine at the age of 50 to further establish herself as a sex symbol despite the popular cultural opinion that older women can't be considered sexy.

in 1989, Collins worked considerably less, making guest starring appearances in such wildly popular series as in 1997. In the late 90s she appeared in several theatrical tours with the likes of George Hamilton and Stacey Keach. Additionally, she appeared in a West End production of with eccentric actor Frank Langella in the year 2000.

In 2001 Collins sold her Los Angeles penthouse, moving to a ritzy Manhattan condo in the Upper East Side. In 2002 she appeared in a limited run on the legendary daytime soap opera to great success and much critical praise. In 2005 she proved to be a formidable guest host of the popular British quiz show , often making quick jokes with the audience. Also that year, Collins sucessfully toured the United Kingdom in a popular one woman show in which she detailed the highs and lows of her roller coaster career. Collins also joined the cast of the hit British television series for a limited run as a glamorous magazine mogul, aptly named Ava de Woolfe. She also held a recurring role in the BBC series as an aristocrat desperate for romance. In addition, in late 2006 she is set to tour North America in the play 1986: Soap Opera Digest Award nomination, Outstanding Villainess in a Primetime Drama Series and Outstanding Actress in a Comic Relief Role in a Primetime Drama Series, 1996: OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II and the British Government for her contribution to the arts and ongoing charity work.