Joan Collins

Had to “shoot myself up” with alcohol before sex scenes

Joan Collins had to "shoot herself up" with alcohol before sex scenes.(Bild: APA/AFP/Michael TRAN)

In the Hollywood of the "MeToo" era, "intimacy coordinators" are a permanent fixture on sets where actors have to drop their covers. Joan Collins has now revealed the tool she used to overcome her shame before sex scenes: lots of alcohol.

In an interview with the "Daily Mail", the British actress looks back on her very first love scene in an Italian film - "which thank God nobody saw". Before it got down to business in front of the camera, the director came into her dressing room: "He put a bottle of rum in my hand and said, cheers, and then come to the set in an hour!"

"So drunk"
Even before she had to shoot an orgy scene with her co-stars Oliver Tobias, Sue Lloyd and Mark Burns on the set of "The Stud" in 1978, "I really shot myself up beforehand - I was so drunk!"

Doesn't want to shoot any more sex scenes 
The 91-year-old is glad that she no longer has to shoot sex scenes these days: "Compared to the past, sex scenes have become so explicit. Maybe some actors manage to convey such extreme passion. It's hard if you don't feel it. I couldn't do that!"

Not that Dame Joan has been offered a role in recent years for which she would have had to strip bare again. She joked: "Our civilization would end if I did that in front of the camera." Yet it was she who caused a scandal over half a century ago when she posed for Playboy at the age of 49. At the time, this was considered outrageous and unseemly for a woman of her age. Collins is glad that female sex symbols today "have a longer shelf life" than in the past: "Just look at Jennifer Lopez at 54 or Demi Moore, who still looks incredibly good at 61. We've come a long way!"

Women used to be "stale" at 27
She still remembers her first contract with the film studio 20th Century Fox: "It ended when I turned 27. That was the point at which women were considered stale back then. That's why I retired, had babies and actually wrote off my job." Except that everything turned out differently and she really took off again just two years later.