TLDR: Joan Collins had already spent three decades in Hollywood, mostly in B-movies and pin-up shoots, before Dynasty turned her into one of television’s most iconic villains. She’s said the role arrived at exactly the moment she needed saving, both professionally and personally.
Joan Henrietta Collins was born May 23, 1933, in London, and landed her first film role in 1951’s Lady Godiva Rides Again.
For the next three decades, she worked steadily but modestly, punctuating a string of B-movie roles with television appearances and pin-up shoots, without ever quite breaking through to major stardom.
The Role Arrived During Her Marriage’s Final Collapse
Collins was called to audition for Dynasty in 1981, cast as Alexis Carrington Colby, Blake Carrington’s scheming ex-wife.
She’s said the timing mattered as much as the role itself, describing her marriage to third husband Ron Kass, an Apple Records executive, as already a marriage in name only by that point, kept up “just for Katy’s sake,” referring to their young daughter.
“By the time Dynasty came along in 1982, saving my life and my career, ours was a marriage in name only,” she later wrote of that period.
Her First Marriage Included a Genuinely Dark Allegation
Collins married Irish actor Maxwell Reed in 1952, when she was just 18, and divorced him in 1956. She’s since claimed he attempted to sell her to an Arab sheikh for a single night, one of the darker chapters in a personal history she’s written about candidly in her own memoirs.
Her second marriage, to singer and actor Anthony Newley, ran from 1963 to 1970 and produced two children, Tara and Alexander.
Her third marriage to Kass, which began in 1972, lasted eleven years and produced her daughter Katy, despite the personal strain she’s described during its final years.
A brief fourth marriage to Swedish pop singer Peter Holm ended after just 13 months in a messy 1987 divorce.
She Found Her Real Partner Working on a Play
Collins met Percy Gibson, a theater manager and producer from a prominent Scottish-Peruvian family, in 2000 while starring in a production his company managed. “We worked together on a play… We enjoyed each other’s company. We hung out together,” she told Fox News Digital. “We wrote love letters, it was a gradual thing, and we realized that we were very much on the same wavelength.”
The two married in 2002, a match with a real 32-year age gap that Collins has addressed directly and without much concern. “It’s just a number,” she said, adding that the relationship works specifically because Gibson isn’t like the men she’d been with before. “Many of the people that I’ve been with, and I’m not going to specify which ones, have been either neurotic, slightly unbalanced, or gotten into different things. He is a really nice, kind, grounded person.”
The couple renewed their vows at the Hotel Bel-Air in 2009 and split their time between homes in New York, London, and the south of France.
Gibson has served as stepfather to her three children from her earlier marriages.
She’s Kept Working Well Into Her 90s
Collins returned to play Alexis one more time in 1997, guest-starring in special episodes of Aaron Spelling’s Pacific Palisades. She’s continued writing since, including self-help beauty books, romance novels, and a 2024 memoir, Behind the Shoulder Pads: Tales I Tell My Friends, detailing her decades in Hollywood and her real relationship with Gibson.
She was made a Dame in 2015 for services to the arts.
Joan Collins, Frequently Asked Questions
How many times has Joan Collins been married?
Five times: Maxwell Reed (1952-1956), Anthony Newley (1963-1970), Ron Kass (1972-1983), Peter Holm (1985-1987), and Percy Gibson (2002-present).
What did Joan Collins say about Dynasty’s timing in her life?
She’s said the role arrived just as her third marriage, to Ron Kass, was collapsing, describing it as having “saved my life and my career” during that period.
Who is Joan Collins married to now?
She’s married to theater manager and producer Percy Gibson, whom she wed in 2002 after meeting him in 2000 while working on a play his company managed.
