Jackie Collins Biography and List of Works

British novelist, now living in California, the younger sister of the actress Joan Collins. Her novels about Hollywood, sex, power, and violence have gained a wide success. Part of the fun of her books is their not-so-well hidden references to well-known celebrities, hot shots, and juicy events reported in tabloids. Collins's books have been sold 200 million copies in more than 40 countries. She has said "the important thing is I get people into the bookstores who probably wouldn't be there otherwise."

Sunday enjoyed them. It was interesting meeting the foreign contingent, and she had run into two or three people she had worked with in Rome.
'You're quite a celebrity,' Steve said with a mixture of jealousy and pride when an important Italian director greeted her with a stream of praise about a film they had made together.
'I did exist before Hollywood,' she said with a smile.
'You bet your ass you did, and I don't want to hear about it.'
(from Sinners, 1984)

Jackie Collins was born in London. Her father was a theatrical booking agent and intended both daughters to go in the theatre. When Joan Collins established herself as a star in Hollywood, Jackie found her talents in popular fiction. However, her novels STUD (1969) and THE BITCH (1979) were later made into films starring her famous sister, and CHANCES (1981) and LUCKY (1985) have been made into television mini-series.

Collins started to write at the age of eight. During a rebellious adolescence she was expelled from school at fifteen. In 1959 she married Wallace Austin - they divorced in 1963. In 1966 she married Oscar Lerman. Like her sister, she went to Los Angeles in search of a film career. In 1968 she made her first bestseller, THE WORLD IS FULL OF MARRIED MEN, achieving overnight success. The book was considered shocking when it was published because of its sexual content.

Since the 1960s Collins have published steadily romance fiction. Though the formula is still the same as in the beginning of her career, her stories from the world of Hollywood are immensely popular. Collins's style is fast-paced and draw on her own or her sister's experiences in the film industry. During the years, the quality of her writing has improved, scenes with sex or drug abuse are closely woven into the plot, and the novels have much greater depth of plot and characterisation. Collins has described herself as, 'an insider who can write like an outsider about the inside'.

In HOLLYWOOD HUSBANDS (1986) Collins covered the sinful lives of the rich and famous, and THE HOLLYWOOD KIDS (1994) focused on the spoiled, aimless children. HOLLYWOOD WIVES (1983) was made into a television miniseries.

Collins's series heroine is Lucky Santangelo, who appeared first in CHANCES (1981), in which Collins established the multigenerational feud between the Bonnattis and the Santangelos. Lucky's adventures continued in LUCKY (1985), in which she was married three times, LADY BOSS (1989), depicting how she became the head of Panther Studios, and VENDETTA (1996), in which she struggled with her arch-enemy, the Bonnatti family, and got back her kidnapped husband Lennie Golden, the handsome Hollywood writer-director.

DANGEROUS KISS (1999) developed further the saga of the street-smart Lucky. In the story Lucky's supermodel goddaughter, Brigette Stanislopoulosis, is raped and force-fed heroin by her vicious Italian husband Carlo. But this is not all: her sister-in-law, the actress Mary Lou Berkeley, is murdered in carjacking.

Other popular writers drawing their subjects from big business, the media or the film industry: Judith Krantz, Shirley Conran, Harold Robbins - For further reading: Joan Collins's autobiography Past Imperfect, 1978, updated in 1984; Contemporary Popular Writers, ed. by David Mote (1997); Hollywood Sisters: Jackie and Joan Collins by Susan Crimp, Patricia Burstein - Note: Joan Collins published her first novel, Prime Time, in 1988. It is set, of course, in the film world and fiests with overblown, nasty characters: "The network wanted a glamorous manipulating bitch, a rotten-to-the-core heartless tramp, a deviously ambitious but sexily elegant woman of the world, a female so mean and gorgeous that every man watching would either want to make love to her or give her a taste of her own medicine, and whom every woman would envy or emulate of the show was a hit."

THE WORLD IS FULL OF MARRIED MEN, (1968)