A Conversation with Jackie Collins

NEW YORK VS. LOS ANGELES
New York is a wonderful city, there's so much going on. I love writing about New York. L.A. is more laid-back and casual. In L.A. the body rules, sex is a commodity, and the struggle in L.A. is for success and fame, and a beautiful and preferably powerful in-the-movie-business partner. In New York, money and social standing rules.

WHY DO SO MANY STARS GET IN TROUBLE WITH THE LAW?
Because they can! And they know if they're famous, they can usually get away with it. Two classic examples of people who can't - O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake. The Robert Blake drama will saturate the news media for the next six months. He's famous, and people are fascinated by fame. What really happened? Did he kill his wife or arrange her murder? Nobody knows. And truth is much stranger than fiction. I only know if I'd written the Robert Blake scenario I would be laughed off the page!! Too bizarre, everyone would say.

HOLLYWOOD EUPHEMISMS:
What it really means when someone in L.A. says...
"Let's do lunch" = Get lost!
"We're just friends" = Can't stop having sex!
"You look great" = Not!
"I was hospitalized for exhaustion" = Drugs and Alcohol!
"I'm on an amazing diet" = Cocaine!
"It's an honor just being nominated" = Pissed because they lost!
"I just haven't met the right girl/guy yet" = Totally gay!

CAN ANY RELATIONSHIP SURVIVE IN HOLLYWOOD?
Relationships in Hollywood are never easy. Especially if two movie stars meet, mate and marry. A deadly combination. They're both stars, so an entourage of people who laugh at their jokes and continually tell them how wonderful they are usually surrounds them. If a movie star takes off on location without their spouse, temptations are everywhere. Making a movie with an incredibly attractive co-star is the biggest temptation of all. Male movie stars are attracted because that's their nature, and female movie stars are attracted because if they're not in a current relationship, the challenge is -- does he find me irresistible? And if not, why not? It happens in real life, too, but with Hollywood couples the heat is more intensified. Real happiness is possible, but people have to work hard to find it. And sometimes, when they're very famous they're not prepared to put in the work.

HOLLYWOOD KIDS
Hollywood kids are constantly changing. When I wrote my novel, Hollywood Kids, I explored the difficulties of being an adult child of rich, famous and powerful parents. There are so many drug overdoses and suicides. Lately we have seen Stella Steven's son succumb to drugs, and Charlie Sheen, clean, sober and currently engaged. The best Hollywood kids at the moment are The Osbournes. They are definitely L.A. kids -- club hopping, swearing, starting their own record label, nagging, screaming, running wild. But they are extraordinarily interesting to watch and great fun. I think everyone identifies with being a kid, and yet in Hollywood it's bigger and better, because they live their life in a fishbowl. The Osbourne kids may like the attention now, but it might soon turn sour, when they realize they have no more privacy.

ARE CELEBRITIES MORE INSECURE THAN OTHERS?
Movie stars are very insecure because they're only as good as their last movie. And they always think that they might never get another movie. Unfortunately, they're right, and the constant struggle to stay at the top is a no-win situation. Take, for example, big stars getting older, such as Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford. As famous as they are, there is always someone coming up behind them. Even Mel Gibson is looking over his shoulder at the newcomers. So it does make celebrities extremely insecure, especially when everyone is looking for that new twenty-something sensation.

SUPERFICIALITY OF HOLLYWOOD
Actors excel at make-believe, so it's easy for them to bury their past and create a wonderful new public image. Famous people love creating cloaks of mystery around themselves, and they all have deep, dark secrets, which is why they fear the tabloids that chase them so relentlessly. It is also why they sometimes live their lives surrounded by an entourage of people who will laugh at all their jokes and do anything they want. Big stars - male and female - like to travel with a masseuse, a trainer, a hair first person, a makeup person, a Feng Shui expert to tell them if the furniture is right in their hotel room, a psychic to tell them if they should fly or drive the next day, and a dietician to keep them eating the right things. Being a star means having other people make your decisions.

RESEARCH
People have fun with my books because they like to recognize the real life characters, and I do write about the real people in Hollywood, quite cleverly disguised I think! I am writing from the inside looking out, not the outside looking in -- which is why I think that people enjoy my books, because they're getting a taste of what actually goes on behind closed mansion doors. And I'm not talking about the Osbournes' doors.

SEXUAL ADDICTIONS
Fact of life - famous men like paying for it. They feel that if they pay for it, they do not have to take her out to dinner, they do not have to be photographed with her, they do not have to make promises, they can do what they want and then pay her and she leaves. Even though they can have any woman without paying, it's always a risk because that woman could turn out to be a stalker. There are many Hollywood bachelors at the moment who like to play the field, such as Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Carson Daley, and Matt Damon. It's like being a kid in a candy store; there are so many beautiful women, and they're all looking for a famous man. Unfortunately, movie stars never know if it's the man the woman wants, or the image. Usually it's the image. So then they move on.

COMPROMISE
A lot of actresses in Hollywood are forced to compromise. Maybe they don't want to bare all, but it's very difficult when there's another actress ready to step in, and the producer is saying, "Honey, just take it off for one scene, it's integral to the plot." They feel if they don't do it, they're not going to get the part and their career will start going downhill, so they constantly compromise themselves. And sometimes it's not such a good thing, and then sometimes it is. For instance, Halle Berry recently took it off in two movies and won an Oscar. Julianne Moore is always taking it off and always getting nominated. However there are actresses who have no nudity clauses in their contracts, such as Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan, and this does not seem to have harmed their careers. My question is, why don't the men take it off? I'd much sooner look at George Clooney than Halle Berry - but that's just me!

STALKING AND PAPARAZZI
Stalking celebrities is much more common then the general public knows about, although they have been reading about it a lot lately. For instance, Madonna has a famous stalker who follows her everywhere, and has been jailed more than once. Liz Hurley had an unfortunate experience with a stalker. A man hung outside her house in London just as she was about to give birth to her baby, and upset her so much that she had to leave her own home. Brad Pitt had a stalker who actually moved into his house and slept in his bed and wore his clothes. That must have been a lot of fun! And Gloria Estefan and her husband are constantly fighting celebrity stalkers in court who make ridiculous claims about them. Sometimes the star has to go to court to stop the nuisance, and often it's much more than just a nuisance. The paparazzi have a job to do, and the legitimate ones are great. But it's the paparazzi stalkers who are not so great. They hide in bushes and photograph you in your private moments with a long distance lens, and sometimes they frighten the life out of people. This is not good karma!

THE ENDURING POPULARITY OF TITILLATING LITERATURE
I love to bring my readers strong visual images, so that when they are reading one of my books they can imagine the characters and put the scenes together in their own minds. Critics say I write a tremendous amount of sex. However, I think I create the reader's own sexual fantasy, and they think I write much more than I actually do. Writing erotic sex is far more fun than writing rude sex. I love it when people say to me 'I couldn't put your book down, and it's so sexy. It really turned me and my husband on!' I am constantly having girls in their twenties come up to me and say they started reading my books when they were teenagers with a flashlight on under their covers, and that they learned everything they know about sex from my books. I always ask them, 'I hope your boyfriend has no complaints?' And they always go, 'Oh, absolutely not!'

RAUNCHY MORALIST
The late great Louis Malle, the famous film director married to Candice Bergen, said of one of my books, 'Jackie Collins is a raunchy moralist.' And I love that description. I know what he meant. The bad guys always get their comeuppance, and the good guys always win. Since we don't always have happy endings in life, I love to create the fantasy, so when people put down one of my books they feel happy, like they've gone on a great trip and had fun! We live in such unromantic times that I like to create great relationships. Chemistry is far more exciting than pornography.