Critics hated Collins’ novels, dismissing the author as “the queen of trash.” But that’s deeply unfair.
“Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story,” a new documentary from CNN Films, traces the author’s career and meteoric rise to the top of the best-seller lists, while also revealing the personal struggles that shaped her work.
What was intriguing about the idea of making a film about Jackie Collins was I knew the woman on the back of the book cover — big hair, shoulder pads.
She took the tough times that she observed other woman having and her mother having and she put that all in her books, but then she changed the endings to be what she wanted.
Some of her personal relationships were very complicated.
Her relationship with her father and how she observed the way that he behaved at home and the way that he treater her mother and the way he was so dismissive of her had a big impact on her.
They had a deep need to find identities that were distinct from each other, but at the same time they had this deep understanding of each other.
Jackie was more of a tomboy but she observed the beauty that Joan had and the power that beauty gave her and that must have had a really big impact on her and the female characters she went on to write.
She definitely went through periods of time in her life where it bothered her, but she also got to a point where she accepted it because it had become the norm.
People just thought if you’re pretty how can you be clever? On so many levels she was a trailblazer, particularly in the kind of feminism she was promoting and sharing with readers in her books.