Joan Collins

Joan Collins is an English actress, author, and columnist whose seven-decade career has produced multiple defining 20th-century English film and American TV roles — particularly her 1981–1989 lead role as Alexis Carrington Colby on ABC's prime-time soap opera Dynasty. She was born Joan Henrietta Collins on May 23, 1933, in Paddington, London, into an Anglo-Jewish-South African family. Her father Joe Collins was an English Jewish theater agent, and her mother Elsa Bessant was a Welsh-English homemaker. Her sister Jackie Collins (1937–2015) was a bestselling English novelist.

Her education at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London (1949–1951) launched her early-career path. Her 1951 first English feature-film appearance in Lady Godiva Rides Again launched her early-1950s English film career. Her 1955 American 20th Century Fox studio contract — at age 22 — launched her 1950s American Hollywood film career.

Her 1950s American Hollywood film career produced multiple American films — particularly Henry King's The Bravados (1958, opposite Gregory Peck), Jose Ferrer's The Big Land (1957, opposite Alan Ladd), and her 1958 lead role in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (in which she played the early-20th-century New York scandal subject Evelyn Nesbit). Her 1960s and 1970s career across multiple British, American, and Italian film productions preceded her 1981 American TV breakthrough.

Her 1981 lead role as Alexis Carrington Colby on ABC's Dynasty (the Aaron Spelling-produced prime-time soap opera) — at age 48 — launched her 1980s American TV public profile. The 1981–1989 nine-season Dynasty run produced 218 episodes and produced her 1983 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a TV Drama Series. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2015. She has been married five times — to Maxwell Reed (1952–1956), Anthony Newley (1963–1971), Ron Kass (1972–1983), Peter Holm (1985–1987), and Percy Gibson (since 2002).

Her name Joan derives from the medieval English form of John (from the Hebrew Yochanan meaning "God is gracious"). Joan was the second-most-popular American girls' name in 1932.