Dame Joan Collins used to nag her sister Jackie about getting mammograms but she refused, the actor has revealed in a 2,000-word tribute.
Jackie Collins, who sold more than 500m novels in more than 40 countries in her four decades-long career, died of breast cancer last Saturday, aged 77.
In an online post called A Tribute to my Beloved Sister, Joan said she only found out about Jackie’s illness two weeks before she died. Despite being diagnosed six-and-a-half years ago, the British author, who lived in Beverley Hills, told few people about her illness.
Joan wrote: “I used to nag my sister about getting mammograms, as our darling mother Elsa had succumbed to the disease in 1962 when she was only in her early 50s. I was religious about doing mammograms regularly. Jackie however refused – she didn’t even like going to doctors. Like my brother and I she was needle-phobic.”
When Joan asked why she hadn’t told her, Jackie had replied: “I couldn’t – I didn’t want to upset you. I know all the problems you’ve been having in the past few years – I didn’t want to burden you with mine.”
According to Joan, this was typical of Jackie, who “always put other people, particularly family, ahead of herself”.
The sisters, who had been rumoured at times to have a difficult relationship, were pictured together in London a few days before the death when Jackie was on a promotional tour for her new novel, The Santangelos.
Joan admitted she had gone through “estrangements” with her younger sister but said they were “thick as thieves” by the time of her death.
The 82-year-old also opened up about Jackie’s “hatred” for her fourth husband, Peter Holm. She wrote: “[Jackie] begged me not to marry him but unfortunately I went ahead – one of the worst decisions of my life. Jackie and I didn’t see each other so much during that period.
“Unfortunately, a couple of years later another relationship I had came between us and, having moved back to Europe, we couldn’t be as close as we wanted to be. Sisters will have their estrangements but happily when that relationship ended and I moved back to LA Jackie and I resumed our devotion to each other.
“I’ve never had a better girlfriend than Jackie, with whom I shared so much in common and could enjoy talking and gossiping away about everything when we were together, going to our favourite restaurants or to the movies or on long-distance phone calls.”
Concluding, Joan said she didn’t think she would ever recover from the sadness of losing her sister.
She wrote: “She will live on in the wonderful memories I have of her from our childhood and particularly from the last 15 years, during which we were closer than ever. I feel her spirit, I hear her wonderful laugh and I see her all the time in the hundreds of photos of her that are sprinkled around my home.
“She wasn’t just a star – to me she was an entire galaxy.”
The actor has requested that people who read her tribute make donations to Penny Brohn Cancer Care in the UK and the Susan G Komen breast cancer organisation in the US.
