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Jacqueline Jill "Jackie" Collins (born 4 October 1937), is a British-born novelist. She is the younger sister of actress-writer Joan Collins and the elder sister of real estate developer Bill Collins, born in 1946.
Collins is currently one of the richest living authors with her personal wealth exceeding £70 million.
Collins was born in Bayswater, London, to Joseph William "Will" Collins (a South African-born Jewish theatrical agent), and Elsa Bessant Collins, a dancer. Jackie is listed as Jewish, on several sites. She has one sister, the actress Joan Collins (b.1933), and a brother Bill Collins (b. 1946). She attended secondary school at the Francis Holland School in central london. However, after what seemed to be a sunny childhood in England, Collins was expelled from high school for poor attendance in 1952. Her parents swiftly sent her to live with her sister Joan Collins, who at the time was starting what would be a roller-coaster career, in Los Angeles. As she later said her parents were fed up with her and no longer felt they could handle her, so they gave her an ultimatum: reform school or Hollywood. "So I went, 'I think Im gonna go with Hollywood'".
While living in Hollywood, Collins attempted to start a film career similar to her sisters. On the whole her career proved fruitless with Collins appearing in only a handful of forgettable films.
Disillusioned with her life, Collins left Los Angeles and returned to London where she married her first husband, jet-setter Wallace Austin, in 1955 and they had a daughter, Tracy--but it was not a happy union. Disgusted with her husband's drug abuse, Collins was not surprised when he abandoned her after only a few years of marriage. She divorced him soon after and went to live with her parents at their flat in north London. He was found dead in a car in Hampshire in 1964, leaving Tracy fatherless. "A tragic marriage", Collins would later recall. "He was really very sick. He was a manic depressive. A fabulous person. But he was put on drugs - methadrine - for the depression".
In 1966 Collins married for the second time to art gallery and Tramp Nightclub owner Oscar Lerman. Together they had two daughters, Tiffany and Rory; additionally, Lerman formally adopted Collins's daughter Tracy.
With Lerman's encouragement, Collins went on to write several steamy bestsellers during the 1960s and 1970s, the first of which "The World Is Full Of Married Men", was published in 1968. Others were to follow, "The Stud" in 1969, "Sunday Simmons & Charlie Brick" in 1971( it was titled under the name "The Hollywood Zoo" in the UK and then retitled "Sinners" worldwide in 1984), "Lovehead" in 1974 (retitled "The Love Killers" in 1989), "The World Is Full Of Divorced Women" in 1975 and "Lovers & Gamblers" in 1977.
In 1978 Collins co-wrote the screenplay for the film version of her 1969 novel The Stud, starring her older sister Joan, as gold-digging adulteress Fontaine Khaled, after Joan had experienced a devastating career slump. Collins had offered the film rights to the novel to her sister for free and the film was produced independently after Joan arranged financing through a casual acquaintance she had met at the Cannes Film Festival. The film went on to become a box office hit. In 1979, Collins released the novel The Bitch, a sequel to The Stud, which was also made into a successful film the same year, with sister Joan reprising her role. The film version of The Bitch was written and directed by Gerry O'Hara, based on Collins' source novel. She also wrote the screenplay for the film "Yesterday's Heroe" in 1979.
In the 1980s Collins and her family moved to Los Angeles on a full time basis. She wrote "Chances" published in 1981, which she describes as her first "Harold Robinsie" novel, also the first to introduce her most famous and followed character Lucky Santangelo, the "dangerously beautiful" daughter of a one-time bootlegger who went "legit". It was also Collins first novel that proved to be highly successful in the US. While living in the high stakes hills above Sunset Boulevard, Collins collected the knowledge to write her most noted novel, "Hollywood Wives" which was published in 1983. The novel hit the New York Times bestseller list at number one, and went on to sell fifteen million copies worldwide. The scandalously successful expose placed Collins in a position of powerful status and her celebrity soon sky-rocketed. It was made into a highly rated mini-series starring the likes of Candice Bergen, Stefanie Powers, Angie Dickinson, Anthony Hopkins, Suzanne Sommers and Mary Crosby, a cast that she considered unsuited to the mini-series. The mini-series was produced by Aaron Spelling. She went on to write the sequel to "Chances", "Lucky" published in 1985, "Hollywood Husbands" in 1986, "Rock Star" in 1988 and "Lady Boss" in 1990, another Lucky Santangelo novel.
In the early 1990s Collins experienced a tremendous loss when her husband of twenty six years, Oscar Lerman, died of cancer in 1992. Striken with grief Collins threw herself into her work, producing two mini -series based on her Lucky Santangelo novels while churning out a few bestsellers, "American Star" in 1993, "Hollywood Kids" in 1994 and "Vendetta: Lucky's Revenge" in 1996. In the mid-1990s Collins met Los Angeles businessman Frank Calcagnini who she became engaged to. Sadly Calcagnini also died of cancer in 1998 as Collins's attempted foray into talk television also floundered. She soon published "Thrill" and wrote a four-part series of mini novels to be released in a newspaper every six weeks called "LA Connections", introducing a very similar heroine to Lucky Santangelo, journalist Madison Castelli. "Dangerous Kiss", the fifth Lucky Santangelo novel was published in 1999 and she soon brought back Madison Castelli in "Lethal Seduction", published in 2000. In 2001 she published "Hollywood Wives: The New Generation", which itself was later turned into a television movie starring Farrah Fawcett and Melissa Gilbert. "Deadly Embrace", the sequel to "Lethal Seduction", was published in 2002 and "Hollywood Divorces" was published in 2003. Her last two recent bestsellers were "Lovers & Players" in 2006 and "Drop Dead Beautiful - The Continuing Adventures Of Lucky Santangelo" in 2007.
Collins is rumoured to possess a fortune in the neighborhood of $200 million (USD), although the Sunday Times Rich List estimates it at £70 million (GBP, equals about $135 million USD) as of 2006.
Currently, Collins resides in Beverly Hills, California hard at work on her 26th novel to be titled "Married Lovers".
In 2004 Collins created a series of specials for E!, which she hosted to great success. She also left her publisher of nearly twenty years, Simon & Schuster, in favour of St. Martin's Press as she grew restless with her current publishing situation. She has also signed a new deal with Fremantle Television to create a television series based on heiresses.
To date she has sold over 400 million copies of her novels and is translated into 40 languages.
Madison Castelli Series
L. A. Connections
Lucky Santangelo Series
Other
Upcoming
