Attitude Icon Award: Dame Joan Collins
The 'Dynasty' star remains one of the world's most cherished gay icons.
By Steve Brown
Dame Joan Collins has been honoured with the Icon Award at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards 2019, powered by Jaguar.
Best known for playing possibly TV’s greatest (and campest) screen matriarch in Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington, Dame Joan Collins has a storied screen career stretching back almost 70 years; one which has always been closely connected to the LGBTQ community, and gay men in particular.
Appearing in Attitude’s Awards issue – available to download and to order globally now – Joan, 86, recalls how she’s had gay friends ever since she was a child growing up in 1930s and ’40s London, due to her father working in the entertainment industry as an agent.
Asked what those friends have brought to her own life, Joan replies: “A lot of humour. I see no difference between my gay friends and my straight friends.
“Miriam Margolyes is one of my friends who is lesbian, and Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor, who I met when I was doing American Horror Story.
“But to me, I don’t see any difference. Julian Clary is one of my best friends. We play poker often, and his husband, Ian, is also a good friend.
“And there’s Rupert Everett, of course.”
Asked how it feels to receive the Attitude Icon Award, Collins replies: “Well [it’s] very flattering. I’m very honoured.
Dame Joan Collins, shot exclusively for Attitude’s Award issue by Brian Aris
“I’m not surprised because I know what I have been a faourite, particularly of gay men and some gay women too, for quite a long time. Ever since Alexis, really.
“An icon, it’s a bit religious, isn’t it? I don’t know, it’s a very nice honour.”
Read the full interview with Joan and all the winners from the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards 2019, powered by Jaguar in the Attitude Awards, out now.
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