Joan Collins reveals she has ‘no regrets’ about having an abortion at 26

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Dame Joan Collins has claimed she has ‘no regrets’ over an abortion she had when she was 26-years-old.

The veteran actress, 88, said she felt keeping the baby would have ‘ruined my life’ and added that if she hadn’t had the illegal abortion ‘it would have been the death of my career’.

Miss Collins, who was engaged to actor Warren Beatty, now 84, at the time, makes the admission on Piers Morgan‘s Life Stories on Sunday night.

Speaking about falling pregnant unexpectedly, she said: ‘I had an abortion. It would have been the death of my career, and I was by then 26.

‘Of course I hesitated but I realised that if I was going to have a child I was going to be able to bring the child up properly and I believed very strongly that I’m in charge of my body.

‘I was a feminist before the word was heard and I shall do what I felt was right for me. It would have been wrong to have done that. It would have ruined my life… it would have ruined my life.’

Asked by Mr Morgan if she had a ‘tinge of regret’, the former Dynasty star said: ‘No, not one.’

Miss Collins, who is now married to her fifth husband Percy Gibson, 56, is this year celebrating 70 years in the showbusiness industry.

Elsewhere in the interview, the mother-of-three admitted that she wasn’t very familiar with many of the household chores.

She told Mr Morgan that she ‘wouldn’t know how’ to iron before joking that she does, but hasn’t done it since ‘probably 1957’.

Asked about hoovering, she said: ‘I don’t know how to use a hoover. I’m not proud of it, Piers’.

Shocked, Mr Morgan said: ‘You don’t know how to use a hoover?’

‘No, our hoover it’s like being in the front of a 747,’ she replied.

She added: ‘I do do the washing up. I put them under the tap and I’ve got a little brush and I brush them and then I put them in the thing that makes them dry.

‘No we don’t have hot and cold running staff you know. It’s just Percy and me.’

She also revealed her secret to looking so young.

‘Well, right now I wake up in the morning whenever I want to wake up. I think part of it is genetic, I think part of it is luck, and I think part of it is a lot of make-up and taking care of your skin.’

Joan was married at 18 to her actor first husband Maxwell Reed, who spiked her drink and raped her on their first date and whom she eventually left after he attempted to sell her for a night to a sheikh for £10,000.

In 1963, she married West End theatre sensation Anthony Newley, father of her children Tara and Alexander, whom she divorced in 1970. He died in 1999, aged 67.

Her 1972 marriage to U.S. businessman Ron Kass, head of The Beatles’ record label Apple and father to their daughter, Katy, also ended in divorce in 1983.

Kass, who died from cancer three years later, aged 51, was reported to have blown a large chunk of his wife’s fortune on a drug habit.

She was also wed to ‘The Swede’. A Pop Star Peter Holm was 14 years her junior, but sparks flew when they met at a pool party in 1983 — the year she won a Golden Globe for Dynasty.

A dazzling couple, he became her lover, manager and then fourth husband in 1985. But it was all over in less than two years.  

Joan also delved into her career and love life in her memoirs Past Imperfect and Passion For Life, discussing her turbulent engagement to Warren Beatty.

Joan met Warren in Hollywood when she was 26 and he was 22, with them being an item for almost two years before calling it quits on their relationship.

She wrote in Passion For Life: ‘Although I wasn’t madly in love with Warren, he and I were actually very compatible, even if he needed to have sex several times a day, which often wore me out… 

‘We continued playing happy families and not long afterwards, Warren actually proposed, presenting me with a large gold ring studded with pearls.

‘By then, we were staying in Paul Newman’s apartment in New York, where Warren was finally shooting his first movie — Splendour In The Grass — with my friend Natalie Wood, who was married to Robert Wagner.’

Joan then had to fly to Rome to film Esther And The King, with Warren not wanting her to leave and ‘bombarding’ her with ‘telegrams, calls and letters’ during the 10-week shoot.

Shortly after rumours started that Warren – by then a huge star -was involved with Natalie and later Vivien Leigh and the couple started having ‘horrible fights’ in LA. 

Reflecting on the romance, the actress penned in her book: ‘For me, though, Warren Beatty was just a rebound. And, young as I was, I really should have known better.

‘The last time I saw him was at a Hollywood screening. All charm, he told my husband Percy: ‘I still love this woman.’ ‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Percy, playfully challenging him to a fight.

‘Not a chance, of course. Now Warren’s happily married to Annette Bening, we kiss and hug whenever we bump into each other.’

The London-born daughter of a theatrical agent, Joan also enjoyed several affairs in between – and sometimes overlapping with – her various marriages.

Joan dallied with 1970s film hunk Ryan O’Neal while she was Mrs. Anthony Newley, and while single ran around with Elizabeth Taylor’s first ex-husband Nicky Hilton.

She also enjoyed the company of Ramfis Trujillo, the short-lived playboy son of the infamously brutal Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Her memoir Past Imperfect also had no shortage of darker moments such as when 20th Century Fox capo Darryl Zanuck attempted to force himself on Joan in a hotel hallway.

‘I wondered how to get out of this without having to knee him in the groin,’ she recalled. ‘Luckily Dorothy Dandridge and a makeup man came walking down the corridor and I made my escape, vowing to keep out of Mr Z.’s way in the future.’ 

While back in January, Joan dished to the Mail On Sunday’s You magazine that she once turned down a pass from Robert F. Kennedy.

‘Ethel, his widow, is still alive so I really don’t want to go into it too much because I wouldn’t want to hurt her,’ she added diplomatically.

‘That was one of the things I said to him: ‘I’m married, you’re married.’ But he was so charismatic,’ the screen queen noted.