Dame Joan tells of teenage ‘transgender moment’
SULTRY actress Joan Collins has revealed she had a “potential transgender moment” in her teens where she experimented with wearing her father’s clothes.
The five-times married star, famed for racy 1970s films The Stud and The Bitch, confessed that at 15 she disliked the idea of becoming a woman and went through a tomboy stage.
She said she spurned her mother’s feminine undies for her father’s corduroy trousers and comfy shirts.
For a while she also went to watch football matches but changed her mind about not wanting to be female when she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and discovered “the joys of boys”.
Dame Joan, 85, who starred as scheming Alexis Colby in US television series Dynasty, told how she was reminded of her 1940s gender confusion by a chat with a modern-day teenager.
Writing in her column for the Spectator magazine, she said: “Watching a popular dance show on TV alongside a young female person (is that OK?), I referred to a woman (can I say that?) who was performing rather badly as ‘the girl in the pink dress’.
“‘You can’t say that’, the teenager squeaked indignantly. ‘It’s sexist and incorrect’. ‘What should I say?’ I asked. ‘The individual in the pink dress’, she replied. ‘We can’t assume how she identifies’.
“This reminded me of my own potential transgender moment. At 15 I decided I did not like the idea of becoming a woman and started on a ‘tomboy’ stage.
“I eschewed my mother’s girdles, suspender belts and slips, and adopted my father’s corduroy slacks and loose shirts. I also took to accompanying him to Arsenal games, where I would wave my ratchet furiously.
“Luckily this all stopped a few months later when I was accepted at Rada and discovered the joy of boys (wait, can I say that?)”
Dame Joan was born in London and first appeared in a stage play at the age of nine. She went on to appear in many TV shows and films including The Girl In the Red Velvet Swing and Rally Round The Flag, Boys!
Her novelist sister Jackie Collins, whose books sold 500 million copies, died of cancer at 77 in 2015.