Wednesday, September 30, 2015

EVENT UPDATE : PURE IMAGINATION THE SONGS OF LESLIE BRICUSSE .. PRESS NIGHT .. ST JAMES THEATRE .. SEPTEMBER 29TH 2015

Joan with Leslie and Evie

Joan & Percy with Joyce & Simon Reuben


Joan attended the press night at The St James Theatre in London for her close friend Leslie Bricusse tribute musical 'Pure Imagination'.. Also in the starry audience were Leslie and his wife Evie (Yvonne Romain), Nannette Newman, Gloria Hunniford, Hayley Mills, Eve Pollard and Petula Clark.. One not to miss!

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

PHOTO FLASHBACK : WHEN IT COMES TO THE THEATRE JOAN IS ALWAYS ON HAND!

When not making films. Joan spent much time in the theatre during the 50's in plays such as 'The Praying Mantis', 'Jassy' and 'The Skin of our Teeth'... Here is a shot of Joan promoting a theatre role around that time!

Monday, September 28, 2015

ON THE COVER: CITIZEN K ... AUTUMN 2015 ..

Joan recently sat for a stunning photo shoot for the latest issue of exclusive fashion mag 'CITIZEN K' along with 'The Royal's' co-star Elizabeth Hurley.. Here is a look at the fabulous cover which pays homage to a shot by Helmut Newton of Elizabeth Taylor for the magazine in 1985.. The magazine is out Sept 29th ...

PRESS UPDATE : PEOPLE MAGAZINE .. SEPTEMBER 25TH 2015 .

Jackie and Tiffany
For all the glamour and Hollywood charm that helped turn Jackie Collins into a star, there was quite a different side to the beloved novelist: that of a down-to-earth mum to her three daughters and devoted grandmother to six kids who called her "Jac Jac". 

"She was always there for us," says Tiffany Lerman, 48, middle daughter of Collins, who died on Sept. 19 after a 6-year battle with breast cancer, at 77. 

"Growing up, she would wake up with us every day, make us breakfast, take us to school, come back and write the entire day, pick us up from school, bring us home and make us dinner ... She was a bit of a superwoman."
Jackie with newborn Rory and Tiffany in 1969
While she was a prolific writer who relished her work, family came first. "She kept her priorities straight," says the author's youngest daughter, Rory Lerman Green, 46, who moved her family from London to L.A. after Collins' 2009 diagnosis to be close. 

"They led a glamorous life," says Rory of Collins and her husband Oscar, married for 26 years until he died of prostate cancer in 1992. "But at home she was normal." 

Indeed, Collins told PEOPLE on Sept. 14 in her final interview, "Everybody thinks I'm glamorous, which I'm not. My sister (actress Joan Collins) is glamorous." 

At home, she said, "I'll be in the kitchen cooking roast chicken and roast potatoes and just sitting around with my kids." 

"Family has always been really important to her," says Rory, "and she's always been loving." 

And well-loved – in life and in memory. 

"We are utterly heartbroken," Collins' daughters told PEOPLE exclusively two days after her death. "She has left us with an extraordinary legacy of love and creativity." 

Overwhelmed by the outpouring of well-wishes from family, friends and fans, Collins' daughters are comforted by their mother's enduring legacy. 

"She has left old and new fans alike with endless hours of fun and entertainment," they tell PEOPLE. "She followed her passions and she lived to tell stories and writing brought her so much joy. We know her vibrant and indomitable spirit will stay alive through her work for many years to come. It's hard to imagine life without her, but we all feel she is with us in so many ways." 

For more on Jackie Collins, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

PRESS UPDATE : LOVELY'S VINTAGE EMPORIUM .. COCKTAIL WITH JOAN .. SEPTEMBER 26TH 2015

COCKTAILS WITH DAME JOAN COLLINS AT CLARIDGES


COCKTAILS WITH JOAN  AT CLARIDGES

Iconic actress Joan Collins (we loved her as Alexis in the TV soap Dynasty in the 1980s) has her own range of beauty products called Joan Collins Timeless Beauty and alongside runningwww.lovelysvintageemporium.com I also write features and style photo shoots about fashion andbeauty for magazines and newspapers. I was therefore invited, as a beauty journalist, to meet and interview Joan Collins DBE for cocktails at Claridges Hotel in London on Wednesday 9th September 2015. This was ten days before any of us knew that her sister Jackie Collins was about to sadly pass away from breast cancer and we pass our condolences on to her family.
We hope you enjoy the pictures taken at Claridges Hotel of me and Joan (oh yes!), her cocktails and her wonderful range of Timeless Beauty products. The foundations are particularly good and stay put all day and the lipsticks are nice and creamy. You can buy them all HERE
My Joan Collins interview
  1.  Do you have a set beauty routine every day?
I always thoroughly cleanse to make sure I get every last scrap of make-up off, followed by using a balancing toner and then I apply a really good night cream, and when cleansing in the morning I use my day cream. I also always apply foundation before going outside to protect my skin and make-up and I keep my face out of the sun, plus of course I use SPF.
  1.  What is your one item of make-up you could not go without? Lipstick 
  1. Did your love of cosmetics start very young and can you remember the first piece of make-up you owned?
My love of make-up started at a very young age when I would watch my mother and many aunts who were all very glamorous, apply their make-up and I always wanted to try it myself. The first piece of make-up I owned was mascara.
  1.  Were you taught by anyone when you were young how to apply make-up?
I was taught by my mother, however it was only when I went to Hollywood for my first American film when I learnt how to properly apply it. I was fortunate enough to work with Allan “Whitey” Snyder who also did Marilyn Monroe and many Fox stars, and although I was adamant that I would not have a make-up artist and do my own make-up, Allan kindly said that he would show me how to properly apply make-up myself, and I have ever since done my own make-up for everything.
  1. What inspired you to create your Timeless Beauty range?
I have been very fortunate to learn many beauty secrets from so many great make-up artists and celebrities through the years so I wanted to share my knowledge with other women, as I know how confident and great make-up makes me feel. By creating the Timeless Beauty range it has enabled me to give others that same confidence when wearing makeup which is what inspired me in the beginning.
  1. Do you have a favourite decade for fashion?
The 80’s definitely! 
  1. Do you have a favourite item of clothing and what is it?
Probably one of the items I’ve designed myself, I have wonderful designers and dress makers in LA and in London.
  1. Do you have a top fashion styling tip for Lovely's Vintage Emporium fans to look good?
Don’t slavishly follow fashion.
  1. Do you have a top beauty tip for Lovely's Vintage Emporium fans to look good?
My top tip would be to keep your face out of the sun, I was taught it from a friend and have observed it since.
 10. From the last few decades who is your female beauty/fashion icon? 
Cate Blanchett, as she’s absolutely beautiful and is one of the few people of today whom I feel are truly glamorous. Victoria Beckham has a particular style which I really like, and Ava Gardner and Vivien Leigh were extremely beautifully dressed. 

Saturday, September 26, 2015

SPECIAL UPDATE : A TRIBUTE TO MY SISTER BY JOAN COLLINS .. SEPTEMBER 26TH 2015 ..




A Tribute To My Beloved Sister

By Joan Collins


The telephone call I never dreamed I would receive came in at 5pm. It was a gloomy thundery afternoon in the south of France and Percy and I were bunkering down in our bedroom to decide which movie we would watch after dinner.
“Hi Sis it’s me!” she said. I was delighted to hear Jackie’s familiar voice. She had told me weeks earlier that she was coming to the UK and we were already planning a host of activities, so I assumed this was one more opportunity to share the excitement of her arrival.
“Isn’t it a bit early for you?” I asked her.
“It’s 8 o’clock – I’ve been up for a while. Are you with Percy? I need to talk to you both about something. It’s rather bad news I’m afraid.”
“What is it?” I asked fearfully.
“I’ve got stage four breast cancer,” her voice broke as she said it, then I burst into tears. “I’ve known for seven years,” she said bravely.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I cried as Percy held me tight.
“I couldn’t – I didn’t want to upset you. I know all the problems you’ve been having in the past few years – I didn’t want to burden you with mine.”
My voice was so choked with tears I could hardly speak. She explained that since we spent so much time in Europe while she was in LA, she knew I would be worried but there would be nothing I could do.
That was typical of my sister. She always put other people, particularly family, ahead of herself. After we hung up we called two of her daughters, Tiffany and Rory, and they verified that they had been taking their mother for treatments for over five years. “But we all expect her to continue for several years since she is so vital and energetic,” said Tiffany, “And she’s just done a publicity tour of the US for her new book.”
She was coming to the UK ostensibly to publicize launch of her latest novel. However now in retrospect I realize it was to say goodbye to her third daughter Tracy, her two granddaughters, her brother Bill and his wife Hazel and some other close friends, all of who lived in London.
When Jackie told us about her cancer I understood why she had lost weight. I had noticed her gradual weight loss two years ago when we went to LA for the winter months and last year asked her about it. She laughed, saying she was no longer eating desserts and was on a diet. I thought the weight loss suited Jackie so I gave it no further thought. Certainly in her ten-page spread in Hello magazine recently she looked fit and fabulous and, as Wallis Simpson always said, “You can never be too rich or too thin”.
The day she arrived in London, we had had tea at her hotel. Even after an overnight transatlantic trip that would fell the stoutest tree, she was bustling about taking pictures and chatting away with me as we always did.
Two nights before she returned to America, Jackie threw a fabulous birthday dinner party for her daughter Tracy upstairs in the private room of a popular west end restaurant. She was her usual sparkling, funny, energetic self, taking masses of pictures of all of us on her iPhone and her camera and looking, as usual, impeccably groomed and glamorous. She seemed full of joie de vivre as we chatted happily about our Christmas plans in Los Angeles and going to Hawaii with her children and grandchildren after that.
I’ve never had a better girlfriend than Jackie, with whom I shared so much in common and could enjoy talking and gossiping away about everything when we were together, going to our favourite restaurants or to the movies or on long distance phone calls.
She was omniscient - she knew everything that was going on in popular culture; she watched practically every television show (on the four DVR sets she kept going continuously); she knew about every pop band, rocker, rapper and singer and where they were in the charts; and of course she was extremely knowledgeable about every new novel and biography on or off the bestseller lists.
Jackie really enjoyed her life so much and lived it to the hilt, and when we were together, even if we hadn’t seen each other for a few months, we were thick as thieves.
She absolutely adored Percy and often teased him and me about him being “number 5” and doing so much for my children. When she asked him about booking some airline tickets for her and her family to come to London, she laughingly apologized and said “now I’m taking advantage of you like Joan does.”
Soon after we were married Percy became part of her inner circle. Jackie was very particular and private about who was in that ring. She had masses of people who loved and admired her and enjoyed a vast social sphere but other than family and some close friends she was extremely selective about whom she chose to share her innermost thoughts with.
It was not in Jackie’s nature to dislike anyone but when she did – watch out! She hated my fourth husband for she could see through him for what he was – a user, a psychopath and a total philanderer. She begged me not to marry him but unfortunately I went ahead – one of the worst decisions of my life.
Jackie and I didn’t see each other so much during that period. She didn’t want to see “the swede” and I was working fifteen hours a day on Dynasty every day. Her relief at the end of that short-lived marriage was palpable - we celebrated wildly with a big party at my house and she and David Niven Jr. led the chorus of approval handing out t-shirts with slogans such as “Holm-less” and “Holm is not where the heart is”.
Unfortunately a couple of years another relationship I had came between us and, having moved back to Europe, we couldn’t be as close as we wanted to be. Sisters will have their estrangements but happily when that relationship ended and I moved back to LA Jackie and I resumed our devotion to each other.
This devotion became most apparent when she was a very young teenager and I was a seventeen year-old starlet under contract to the Rank organization. For two years Jackie painstakingly cut out and pasted every single press clipping about me into a big blue scrapbook, recording the name and date of the publication in her flowing handwriting.
When I went to Hollywood in the fifties she wrote to me, and I to her, at least once a week – her letters full of news, fun and gossip. Later, during what we refer to as the “Tramp” years, when her husband Oscar Lerman owned and ran the nightclub with Johnny Gold, her letters about the hijinks in the club became quite raunchy and they really made me laugh.
By then she was already writing her novels and her first one, The World is Full of Married Men, was a huge bestseller. Even though some criticized the sexual content of the book it didn’t bother her. “That’s the way it is with so many husbands,” she’d say wisely, “They can’t keep it zipped.” Jackie in fact had started writing when she was only ten years old, and I would illustrate her first stories because I wanted to be a dress designer. I wonder where they are now.
Jackie wrote the character of Fontaine Kahled in her novel The Stud, with me in mind. When we made the movie it was a great success for both of us, even though the critics and moralists mocked it, calling it “soft porn” and “disgusting”.Jackie wrote about what she knew, particularly the Hollywood stories of divorce, betrayal and scandal. She despised men who were unfaithful to their wives as she had an extremely strong moral ethic. “I had my wild child phase when I was a teenager up until I got married.”
Recently, when we were looking through one of her many photo albums, I kept asking who the several different good-looking guys she was with on various beaches, “My boyfriend” she replied to every one of them.
“Wow, you had a lot of them!” I exclaimed.
“I know,” she twinkled.
I remember fighting men off Jackie when she was only fourteen. Once we were followed from the beach all the through the backstreets of Cannes by an extremely famous English movie star who was trying to pick her up. And when she came to Hollywood I gave her the keys to my car and my apartment, told her where she could reach me and jetted off to film in Barbados for three months. By all accounts she had a ball in LA and my parents, in an effort to reform her, had chosen the worst possible antidote.
I think that her iconic character Lucky Santangelo, the star of many of her books, was Jackie’s alter ego. Brave, ballsy and beautiful, she suffered no fools, took no prisoners and lived her life exactly as she wanted to. Lucky believed, as did Jackie, that “girls can do anything” and Jackie instilled that credo in her three remarkable daughters.
My sister and I never employed a stylist nor did we have makeup artists, preferring to do our faces ourselves. She had her signature look and I had mine, and what we wore and how we looked epitomized who we were. Neither of us followed fashion slavishly but wore what suited us and phlegmatically, and with British thrift, we both agreed it was ludicrous to spend thousands of pounds employing some young chick to go shopping for us. Besides why should we give over the pleasure of a good shopping expedition to someone else? Jackie truly enjoyed shopping for jewelry. She wore them all the time – gorgeous pendants, necklaces and earrings that she often designed herself.
We both adored the movies since we were children and went as often as possible, and our favourite outing for the last ten years was to get up early on Saturday or Sunday and head off to see the latest movie that we agreed was worthy of a trip to the cinema – it was uncanny how we agreed on most of the films. We were so fascinated by show business as children that we wrote off for signed pictures of actors and actresses. Jackie had “fan crushes” on Tony Curtis and Steve Cochran – dark brooding “bad boy” types on whom she later based several of the characters in her novels, including Gino Santangelo.
Her second husband Oscar was the man that everybody loved. He was charming, urbane and unerringly witty, not to mention a great dresser! After Oscar died in 1992, she started a relationship with darkly handsome Frank Calcagnini. They were extremely compatible and happy together until he too sadly died in 1996.
I used to nag my sister about getting mammograms, as our darling mother Elsa had succumbed to the disease in 1962 when she was only in her the early fifties. I was religious about doing mammograms regularly. Jackie however refused – she didn’t even like going to doctors. Like my brother and I she was needle-phobic.
As Jackie said in her last interview she did things her way. I celebrate the way she lived her life and, as she put it, the pleasure she gave to me and to so many people. In her inimitable way she had more concern for others than for herself to the end, and anyone who knew Jackie well will tell you how courageous and selfless she was. This, of course, was one of the reasons for her great success in both her personal and professional life and why she was loved and admired by so many. I therefore choose to remember her as the strong, independent, loyal, caring, maternal, fun-loving, witty, joyful woman she was.
I don’t think I will ever recover from the sadness of losing my beautiful baby sister. Someone once said, “The reality is that you don’t ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one, you learn to live with it.” I think Jackie would have liked us to do more than that. As she requested, I will not mourn her death, but rather celebrate her life. She will live on in the wonderful memories I have of her from our childhood and particularly from the last fifteen years, during which we were closer than ever. I feel her spirit, I hear her wonderful laugh and I see her all the time in the hundreds of photos of her that are sprinkled around my home.
She wasn’t just a star – to me she was an entire galaxy.

Donations

I have posted this online freely available. If you have read or wish to republish this article, please make a donation to the following organisations:
For UK – Services will be held privately for family. In lieu of flowers please send a donation to Penny Brohn Cancer Care.
For USA – Services will be held privately for family. In lieu of flowers please send a donation to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Organization.

PRESS UPDATE : SAGA MAGAZINE .. SEPTEMBER 26TH 2015 ..

Saga

Joan Collins' beauty secrets

Lynnette Peck / 26 September 2015
Over cocktails with Dame Joan at Claridges Hotel in London a couple of weeks ago, we asked her some beauty questions exclusively for Saga readers.


Dame Joan Collins, 82, has been working as an actress since the age of nine and has appeared in numerous films and TV shows, written books and had clothing ranges - but until last year had never put her name to beauty products. Joan Collins Timeless Beauty was launched in March 2014 and the autumn collection, comprising of skincare, cosmetics and a fragrance is now on sale. 

Do you have a set beauty routine every day?

When cleansing in the morning I use my day cream and at night I always thoroughly cleanse to make sure I get every last scrap of make-up off. I follow this by using a balancing toner and then apply a really good night cream. I always apply foundation before going outside to protect my skin and I keep my face out of the sun, plus of course I use an SPF.

What is the one item of make-up you could not go without?

Lipstick.

Did your love of cosmetics start very young and can you remember the first piece of make-up you owned?

My love of make-up started at a very young age when I would watch my mother and many aunts, who were all very glamorous, apply their make-up and I always wanted to try it myself. The first piece of makeup I owned was mascara.

Were you taught by anyone how to apply make-up?

I was taught by my mother but it was only when I went to Hollywood for my first American film that I learnt how to apply it properly. I was fortunate enough to work with Allan “Whitey” Snyder who also did Marilyn Monroe’s make-up and many other Fox Studio stars - although I was adamant that I would not have a make-up artist and would do my own make-up. Allan kindly said that he would show me how and I have done my own make-up for everything since.

What inspired you to create your Timeless Beauty range?

I have been very fortunate to learn many beauty secrets from so many great make-up artists and celebrities through the years, so I wanted to share my knowledge with other women. I know how confident great make-up makes me feel. By creating the “Timeless Beauty” range it has enabled me to give others that same confidence when wearing make-up.

Do you have a top beauty tip for Saga readers?

Keep your face out of the sun. I was taught it from a friend and have observed it since.

Who is your beauty icon?

Cate Blanchett is absolutely beautiful and one of the few people of today whom I feel is truly glamorous. Victoria Beckham has a particular style, which I really like, and Ava Gardner and Vivien Leigh were extremely beautifully dressed.
Joan Collins Timeless Beauty is available from joancollinsbeauty.com; Urban Retreat, QVC and Harrods.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by Saga unless specifically stated.
The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal, medical or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation.
- See more at: http://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/style-beauty/beauty/joan-collins-beauty-secrets#sthash.fu4xOOXU.dpuf

PRESS UPDATE : THE ECONOMIST .. SEPTEMBER 26TH 2025

The Economist

Obituary: Jackie Collins

Hollywood undressed

Jackie Collins, novelist of California’s ritziest zipcode, died on September 19th, aged 77


WHEN Jackie C. strode into the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel, half the room stood up to greet her. It wasn’t hard to see why. A lush mane of dark hair, expertly teased out. Impeccable, but understated, make-up. An effortlessly classy black jacket and slacks. Strappy high-heeled sandals. A wide but simple swathe of Cartier diamonds completed the look. Diamonds always helped.
She was in her 70s, but looked at least 40 years younger. Botox was not the reason. Among this throng of surgically aided women and men, blowing air-kisses towards her from their puffy chipmunk cheeks, her unwrinkled glow came from sheer power. She loved it that the waiter fussed her, pushed in her chair and already had her sparkling water poured. She loved it that age—not that she felt it for one moment—let her do what the fuck she liked..
There was probably no one in the room who knew Hollywood better. She was its resident anthropologist, anatomiser and guide. The Grill for lunch. Mr Chow’s or Cecconi’s for dinner. Soho House for the best view of the whole staggeringly beautiful city of Los Angeles. Neiman-Marcus in Beverly Hills for shoes and jewels.  
But this was only the start. Jackie C. also knew the places of furtive whispers and hot sheets. All of them. She had experienced 90210’s wicked side ever since the age of 15, when she made Errol Flynn chase her round a table in the louche Chateau Marmont Hotel and fought off Sammy Davis Jr. Ever since she’d two-timed a couple of car mechanics on Sunset Boulevard. And ever since Marlon Brando, at a party, had admired her magnificent 39-inch breasts at the start of their brief but fabulous affair. Now for trysts she recommended the Bel-Air (“very discreet”) and Geoffrey’s at the Beach for waves, lights and general sexiness.
Yet this was still not why she was the most potent and dangerous person in the room. She was a writer. Over the years, quietly and intently, she had watched what the denizens of Hollywood were doing, and listened to what they were saying. Who had ditched whom. Who was eyeing up whom. Who had slept with whom, and full details. From her corner table at Spago’s, or half-hidden by a drape in a nightclub, or under the dryer at Riley’s hair salon, she would gather every last crumb of gossip and rush to the powder room to write it down. She turned it into sizzling novels in which, every six pages or so, enormous erections burst out of jeans, French lace panties were torn off and groans of delight rang through the palm-fringed Hollywood air. There were 32 books in all, with titles like “The Stud”, “The Bitch”, “Lethal Seduction” and “Hollywood Divorces”. She had sold half a billion of them worldwide. Anyone she met might turn up there. Stars would beg her not to put them in her stories, and she would tell them they were there, toned down, already. Hard luck.
The ultimate aphrodisiac
She could not be suborned because she was not one of them. For a start, she was a Brit from north London, with that cute and surprising accent. When she was not thinking, she might still drive on the wrong side of the road. She had come out to Hollywood for good in the 1970s in the wake of her elder sister Joan.
When pushed, too, she showed her wild and stubborn side. She lived life on her terms, absolutely. Her schooldays had come to an abrupt end when she was expelled for slipping off to bars in Soho. Every sexual position and practice she wrote about—in taxis, in elevators, off dinghies, en plein air or, best of all, tantric—had been personally researched. Her heroines were insatiable. They also had balls of fire, as they never did in fiction before she got started. They kicked ass, and so did she. Her favourite, Lucky Santangelo, star of her grittier Mafia novels, ended up running a chain of casinos in Las Vegas. Channelling her, Jackie C. sported oversize Gucci bags that might just conceal a gun, and reacted to an attempted carjack by reversing at speed. Never fuck with Jackie C. Her mascot was a panther—lithe, elegant, fierce.
And unpredictable. No stylist and no driver for her, though she had made a fortune from the novels and the TV spin-offs and could afford all the staff she liked. She designed her own mansion, did her own nails, executive-produced the films of her own books. And despite the orgiastic goings-on all round her, she stayed faithful—mostly—to her own men. She helped her first husband through methadone addiction and her second and third through terminal cancer. She sent her daughters to strict Catholic schools. Between the exhausting research-gathering and writing she cooked great meatloaf. Quite the Beverly Hills Housewife, in some ways.
Yet in other ways she never was. Writing gave her a power like no one else’s, the ultimate aphrodisiac. Glancing now round the hotel lounge, taking in the bizarre bimbos and blond toy-boys and producers with gold chains in their chest hair, she knew she exuded more sex appeal than all of them together. And as for the bulging-tight trousers of the gloriously handsome Italian waiter who bent to serve her, that careless come-on swivel of the hips…

PHOTO FLASHBACK : WITH HAIR IN FULL FLIGHT .. THE COLLINS GIRLS HIT LONDON AIRPORT!

Jackie & Joan look sensational with Jackie's daughter Tracey at London Airport in 1962 .. 

Friday, September 25, 2015

PRESS UPDATE : PEOPLE MAGAZINE .. SEPTEMBER 25TH 2015

Five days before a six-and-a-half year battle with breast cancer ended Jackie Collins' life, the
bestselling author sat down with PEOPLE at her Beverly Hills home and opened up about her diagnosis, her hopes for the future and her insistence on living every day to the fullest.

Although Jackie Collins did not know how much time she had left when she sat down with PEOPLE for an emotional interview on Sept. 14, just days beforeher death at 77, the celebrated novelist said she did not fear dying. Instead, she chose to embrace it with the strength admired by her devoted family, friends and fans. 

"Death and taxes happen to everyone. So why should one be frightened of it?" she told PEOPLE exclusively from her home in Beverly Hills. "Also, I'm a hovering Buddhist. Hovering, because I don't chant. It's a very peaceful way of living." 


Jackie Collins' Daughters: 'We Are Utterly Heartbroken' Over Loss of Mother Who Was a 'Bit of a Superwoman'| Death, Cancer, Jackie Collins
Jackie with daughter Tiffany
Choosing to live a full life until her last days – continuing to write and spend time with her three daughters, six grandchildren, brother Bill and sister Joan Collins – Collins revealed that she did not necessarily view death as something final. 

"Death is peaceful, and maybe you come back as something else and maybe you don't," she said. "Now I'll sound very Shirley MacLaine, but I have this feeling that I was a cheetah or a panther in another life and that I was also a black soul singer. Male. So I do believe that you can come back as something else or someone else." 

Collins said she thinks she briefly saw "the white light" during the birth of eldest daughter Tracy in 1961. 

"I believe in the white light – I think I when I had my first daughter I saw it," she said. "I remember it very distinctly. It was like a tunnel, and the light is waiting for you at the end. I was in so much pain, literally tearing my hair and screaming the place down, so maybe I just decided to take off and then I changed my mind." 

Diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer six-and-a-half years ago, Collins chose to keep her illness almost entirely to herself, confiding primarily in her three daughters, Tracy, 54, Tiffany, 48, and Rory, 46 – who characterized theirbeloved mother as a "bit of a superwoman" 

Collins told PEOPLE she waited two years to see a doctor after finding a lump in her breast, admitting she was "doctor-phobic" and initially willed herself to believe it was benign. But after her long battle with the disease, the author told PEOPLE she encourages other women to get diagnosed sooner than she did. 

"That was my choice and maybe it was a foolish one, but it was my choice," she said. "Now I want to tell people it shouldn't be their choice." 

Never one to wallow in self-pity, Collins focused on her legacy – and not regret. 

"I want on my gravestone, 'She gave a great deal of people a great deal of pleasure,' " she said. 

For more of Jackie Collins' final interview and photo shoot – and for interviews with her daughters – please pick up PEOPLE, on stands on Friday

PHOTO FLASHBACK : JACKIE'S THE BEST SELLER'S IN THIS GROUP!


Joan & Jackie party with Peter Sellers in this 1976 photo..

PRESS UPDATE : ATTITUDE MAGAZINE .. SEPTEMBER 2015

Gaydio presenters reflect on Jackie Collins’ final UK interview

Posted On 23 Sep 2015 11:24
By : 
Close to midday on Friday September 9 – just ten days before she died – Jackie Collins gave what was to be her final UK interview in her hotel suite at Grosvenor House Hotel, before flying back to LA later that day. Her interviewers? Neil and Debbie, Gaydio DJs and longtime fans who’d interviewed her several times before. We’ll let them take it from here…
Neil and Debbie meet Jackie for what was to be her final UK interview.
Neil and Debbie meet Jackie for what was to be her final UK interview.
“Just over a week ago, we went to interview one of our absolute all-time favourite people – Jackie Collins. Little did we know that she was quite so ill.
Jackie was one of the wittiest, warm and compassionate people we’ve had the fortune of interviewing – this was our fourth time with her. What happened afterwards will stay with us forever. The microphones went off and Jackie asked us all about our favourite interviews; we talked about life, her kids and we spent 20 minutes with her we’ll never forget. She was laughing and was on fine form. She didn’t have to do that and little did we know this was the last time we’d ever see her.
Jackie was always talking about her gay best friends and how much she loved her LGBT fans – as much as we adored her. A truly astonishing woman.
You are an incredible woman Jackie and will always have a very special (and camp!) place in our hearts.”
Neil & Debbie
Neil and Debbie will air the very special interview with Jackie Collins during their Gaydio show from 11am to 1pm on October 3.
The presenters during a previous chat with Jackie.
The presenters during a previous chat with Jackie.