At the tender age of 17, Joan Collins was thrust into the limelight after signing a movie studio contract in her native England. By 21, Hollywood had taken notice, and she became one of the last actresses to enter the fading studio contract system. Collins worked steadily between London and California for decades, but it wasn’t until her star turn as Alexis Carrington on Dynasty in 1981, that she became a worldwide phenomenon at the age of 48. Entering in the show’s second season, Collins redefined television with unapologetic glamor, razor-sharp wit and a level of corporate ambition rarely afforded to female characters at the time. Ratings surged, and television officially gained its first queen of shade.

As Alexis, Collins was magnetic: powerful, seductive, and ruthlessly self-possessed. She delivered barbs with precision, turning her biting tongue into a weapon and excess into spectacle. The audience couldn’t look away. Decades later, a new generation is discovering her character and flooding social media with clips of her most cutting one-liners.

That same self-possession defined her public persona and continues today. Asked just a few months ago by Hello! what she would never apologize for, Collins’s answer was simple: “Being me.” It’s a stance that has helped cement her as both a global icon and, in Britain, a national treasure, formally recognized in 2015 when the title of Dame was conferred upon her by the United Kingdom.

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With five marriages under her glittering belt and three children, the star’s off-screen life has been no less cinematic. The homes she has inhabited—from London flats to Beverly Hills villas to a sunlit retreat in the South of France—trace a parallel narrative of reinvention, resilience, and control. Take a look at the interiors below to get a glimpse into the many lives Collins has lived.

In their London apartment, Maxwell Reed and Joan Collins bond with Spider the monkey.

“Not to my taste at all”

Taken around a year after her 1952 marriage to 33-year-old actor Maxwell Reed, this photograph captures a 19-year-old Joan Collins with their pet monkey, Spider, in the Hanover Square apartment she would later come to dread. In her book Past Imperfect, Collins alleged that Reed drugged and sexually assaulted her on their first date, but that she felt compelled to marry him afterward, believing she had little choice following the loss of her virginity.

The flat itself, styled by Reed, reflected a sensibility entirely at odds with her own. Collins would later describe it as “slightly satanic,” with black wallpaper and matching sheets, somber lighting, and an imposing faux-sixteenth-century Spanish gilt bergère. Tasseled lamps fitted with low-wattage yellow bulbs cast the rooms in a murky glow. “It had the feeling of a Hammer horror film,” she recalled. “Not to my taste at all.”

Joan and her little brother enjoying tea at home in 1954

Harley House

By 1954, when this image was taken, Collins had separated from Reed and returned to her family’s apartment at Harley House in Marylebone, London. Built in 1904 on the edge of Regent’s Park, the Edwardian mansion block in which the apartment is located—originally intended for the servants of wealthy Irish Catholic families—has since become one of the area’s more desirable addresses.

Collins would later describe the four-bedroom flat as “dark and cavernous,” its scale defined by a large entrance hall where her father installed a grand, 1920s-style cocktail cabinet for entertaining. The sitting room, decorated by her mother, offered a softer counterpoint, furnished with velvet-covered Knoll sofas, polished 1940s wood pieces, and an assortment of ceramics, including figurines of dancing ladies. Here, Collins is pictured with her baby brother Billy, partaking in the ritual of a proper English tea.

The Hollywood newcomer posed poolside at home

In 1955, when this photo was taken, a young Joan Collins had just arrived in Hollywood after signing a $1,250-a-week contract with 20th Century Fox—an extraordinary deal for a newcomer. With films like The Virgin Queen and The Girl in the Velvet Swing released that year, she appeared in a series of publicity shoots, including this sultry poolside portrait at her Los Angeles home. According to Collins, in the beginning, the glamour was all Hollywood. “I was a scruffy little kid from London,” she recalls in her documentary This Is Joan Collins. “They had to groom and glamorize me, which they did to a tee.” She would eventually grow to embody the image.

Her LA home had few possessions, but distinctive wallpaper.

A place to call home

By 1960, when this image was taken, Joan Collins was nearing the end of her seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox and spending most of her time in Los Angeles, often with then-fiancé Warren Beatty. (The pair broke up before making it down the aisle.) So naturally, she answered “California” when asked on CBS’s Person to Person where she considered home. Her answer came with a caveat, however: “I still don’t have any possessions,” she said. “I don’t have any furniture, I don’t have a house, I don’t have a car. I have a lot of suitcases, that’s about it.”

Underscoring the modest scale of her rented Los Angeles hills abode, pictured here during the interview, the star remarked as she leaned against the dining room bar, “It’s rather difficult to do any lavish entertaining. Nobody fits. If anybody does come over here, they have to wear slacks and sit on the floor.”

Toddler Tara seems to have inherited her mother’s fashion sense and direct gaze.

A new role: motherhood

In 1963, Collins married her second husband, actor and composer Anthony Newley. She is pictured here snuggled up to their two children Tara and a then newborn Alexander. “I really enjoyed motherhood and could spend hours just cuddling and playing with Tara,” she writes in Passion for Life about how she felt after having her first child. After divorcing Newley in the early 1970s, the actress went on to have a third child, Katyana, with third husband Ron Kass.

Despite this seemingly relaxed photo, the mid ’70s made it difficult for Collins to achieve balance.

The glamorous life?

This 1976 glam shot of Collins lounging on the diving board of her Beverly Hills home belies a contrasting reality. During the 1970s, Collins was raising six children—her three and those of her third husband, music executive Ron Kass—while relying on television guest roles and a string of campy horror films for income. When Kass lost his job in 1976, a friend suggested she file for unemployment to receive the $188 per week paid out at the time. But a visit to the office quickly turned overwhelming when she was recognized and swarmed for autographs. She never went back.

Although it was British through and through, Collins’s historic home had enough ornate flair to appease Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter.

A celeb-studded address

Back in London in 1982, Collins sits inside her home, a three-story, high-ceilinged house stamped with one of England’s blue-plaque historic designations, indicating that John Mansfield, the country’s second poet laureate, once lived there. Located in London’s swanky Little Venice neighborhood, the classical mansion sits right on the edge of Regent’s canal and has housed other recognizable names, like Earl Spencer (Princess Diana’s brother) and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. Paul McCartney once lived next door.

In her Beverly Hills home, Collins wears a gown by Nolan Miller, who often dressed the Dynasty cast.

Ready for prime time

In this 1985 snap, taken at the height of Dynasty’s reign as the top-rated show on television, Joan Collins poses at the grand piano in the living room of her Bowmont Drive home in Beverly Hills, a two-story mock Tudor set in the hills of Coldwater Canyon. Though not her favorite residence, Collins notes in Passion for Life that it was “quite suitable for a young family.” She made the most of the space, turning the primary bedroom into a peach-toned retreat with accents of lime green, complete with a full suite of lounge furniture and palm trees.

Collins in her living room in Saint-Tropez

Chez Joan

Joan Collins has long spent several months each year at her villa in the South of France, a five-bedroom, five-bath residence she has owned for over three decades. Set on six acres of hilltop land on the Saint-Tropez peninsula, Collins’s “Happy Place” is surrounded by umbrella pines and oak trees. “I still never tire of looking out at all the sparkling glory of the rolling hills, the sea, and the Porquerolles island, which is 20 miles away but on a clear day seems very close,” she writes in Passion for Life. Collins is pictured here in the living room in 2013.

Collins with her fifth (and final?) husband at home in West Hollywood.

Happily ever after

After her split from Peter Holm—the most dramatic of her four divorces—Joan Collins told the press she would never marry again. But she soon fell for theater manager and film producer Percy Gibson who is 32 years her junior, and the two have been married since 2002. “After 25 years of being together, I never get tired of being with my handsome, wonderful, funny A-Hubby Percy Gibson,” Collins wrote on Instagram in 2025. The pair are pictured here enjoying breakfast on the terrace of their 2,300-square-foot Sierra Towers condo, which they have since sold. With Collins approaching her 93rd birthday on May 23, 2026, the pair now reside between London, Saint-Tropez, and Beverly Hills.