Dame Joan Collins: Marilyn Monroe warned me of Hollywood ‘wolves’

Dame Joan Collins has told how she was warned by Marilyn Monroe to “watch out for the wolves” of Hollywood in the earlier years of her career.

The British actress recounted a number of moments where she was “inappropriately” approached by film bosses, following the string of allegations of sexual harassment that have emerged against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Recalling meeting Monroe after first moving to the US in her early 20s, she said in a TV interview yesterday: “I met Marilyn at a party at Gene Kel- ly’s house. She told me, ‘Watch out for the wolves in Hollywood, honey’.

“I said, ‘I’ve been in British films for three years, I can handle wolves’, and she said, ‘Not the power bosses, honey, if they don’t get what they want, they drop your contract’.”

Dame Joan went on to recall scenarios with “fat, old, ugly” producers and executives who pressurised her to engage in sexual acts in order to get film roles. One exposed himself in a car, while another asked her to join him in the bath and, on one occasion, a married studio boss offered to buy her an apartment where he could visit her several times a week.

Born into a showbusiness family, Dame Joan, 84, said her theatrical agent father had opposed her going into the industry because “he warned me about men”.

While Dame Joan said she had never done the “casting couch”, adding: “I think that it’s been something that’s been going on, certainly since I started, as a young actress of 16, 17.

“Most of these men were fat and old and ugly and hideous. You have to remember that, when I came into the business in the mid-1950s, these men had been in the business since they were young, in their 20s, so they were all old and they fancied themselves as bon vivants and lovers.”