Joan Collins arrives at the V&A 2023 Summer Party on June 21, 2023.Photo:Karwai Tang/WireImage
Karwai Tang/WireImage
Joan Collinsis reflecting on her decision to marryMaxwell Reedafter he allegedly raped her.
“I was 17, but I was the equivalent mentally of 12,” she toldThe Guardian. “We did not have sex education. I never saw a penis till I got raped and then I refused to look at it."
“My mother told me men only want one thing and I guess she was right,” she added.
Joan Collins and Maxwell Reed at the premiere of the film ‘Sudden Fear’ in September 1952.Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty
Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty
Collins — who is promoting her new book,Behind the Shoulder Pads— went on to marry Reed in 1952 “because I come from a generation where if you’re going to have sex, you get married,” she told the publication.
The actress previously detailed the alleged rape in the 2022 BBC documentaryThis Is Joan Collins. In the doc, she claimed, “The next thing I knew I was flat out on the sofa and he was raping me. In those days, my mother would have said I was taken advantage of. Now, we call it date rape.”
She also admitted the pair’s four-year marriage — which ended in 1956 — was born “out of shame.”
Maxwell Reed and Joan Collins after their wedding at Caxton Hall Register Office, London.PA Images via Getty
PA Images via Getty
Recalling how the split came about, Collins said it occurred after a night out at the “terribly chic nightclub” Les Ambassadeurs in London.
“Max had a habit of gravitating towards rich, elderly men, and I was starting to get a vague idea of what this was all about,” she shared in the doc. “Max told me, ‘He’ll pay you £10,000 for one night—and I can even watch.’ I looked at my handsome, loathsome husband and began to cry. ‘Never in a million years.’ I went home to Mummy.”
In her interview withThe Guardian,Collins detailed how shemoved on following her divorce from Reed, sharing, “I lived with several men, one after another. I was a serial monogamist.”
Joan Collins attends the press night performance of “Cinderella” on August 18, 2021.David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty
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“I realizedI was unconventional,” she continued. “I thought: there’s nothing wrong with this. I lived with Sydney Chaplin, then Arthur Loew Jr, then I had an affair with a married man – it was utter hell.”
In 1963, Collins married British pop starAnthony Newley, with whom she had two children, daughter Tara later that year and son Alexander in 1965. However, the two ultimately divorced in 1971. Shortly after, Collins marriedBeatlesrecord producerRon Kassin 1972 and their daughter Katy was born the same year. They were married until 1983. Collins’ fourth marriage to Swedish singerPeter Holmalso ended in divorce after they were together from 1985 to 1987.
For more than two decades, Collins has been married to producerPercy Gibson. “Percy is themost honorable manI’ve ever met,” she told PEOPLE in March 2002, shortly after the pair married that February.
“I kissed a lot of frogs before I found my prince,” Collins later wrote in her 2011 memoirThe World According to Joan.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
