JOAN COLLINS MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures

“Age is just a number. It’s totally irrelevant unless you happen to be a bottle of wine.” —Joan Collins

 

GROWING UP in London, Joan Henrietta Collins knew from the start she was going places. “My mother used to call me Miss Perpetual Motion because apparently I never kept still for a second,” she said. Once Joan hit the stage at the age of 19, there was no stopping her from being a success. “I never chased fame,” she insisted. “But I can’t say I wouldn’t turn my back on fortune!” That’s why she channeled her tirelessness into interests beyond the screen — creating a beauty line, writing books and raising money for charity. Today, this grandmother of four, who turned 90 on May 23, still has no intention of slowing down. “I try to make each day like a mini-lifetime, to achieve something and to enjoy something. I live in the present totally, and the future...who knows what the future is?”

1 1937 SOUL SISTER “We were very close. I still dream about her,” shared Joan of her younger sister, the late novelist Jackie Collins. “I’ve never had a better girlfriend than Jackie. She’ll live on in wonderful memories from childhood.”

2 1955 WANT ADDS With Land of the Pharaohs, she’d land a Hollywood contract. “[And] I took the opportunity and I ran with it. And I did what the studio wanted. I went on the diets, dressed like they wanted me to, went out with the guys that they wanted me to.... [But] how many young actresses at that time would have given their eyeteeth to have had that opportunity?”