Jackie Collins Net Worth, Height, Age, Husband, Death, Personal Life, Career, & Wiki

Table of Contents

Jacqueline Jill Collins OBE was an English romance author and actress who lived from 4 October 1937 until 19 September 2015. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1985 and stayed there for the rest of her career. She published 32 novels, all of which were New York Times bestsellers.

Her works have been translated into 40 languages and have sold over 500 million copies. Her works have been adapted for the cinema in the form of films or television miniseries in eight cases. She was Dame Joan Collins’ younger sister.

Jackie Collins Bio/Wiki

Real Name	Jacqueline Jill Collins
Nickname	Jackie Collins
Age	77 years (at the time of her death)
Date Of Birth	4 October 1937
Birth Place	Hampstead
Height	1.7 m
Weight	N/A
Eye Colour	Hazel
Hair Colour	Brown
Hometown	United States
Marital Status	Divorced
Husband	Oscar Lerman
Nationality	American
Profession	English romance author and actress
Estimated Net Worth at the time of her death (Approx)	$180 million

Early Life

Collins was born in the Hampstead neighbourhood of London in 1937 and grew up there. Elsa (née Bessant) Collins (dead 1962) and Joseph William Collins (died 1988), a theatrical agent whose clients included Dame Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Sir Tom Jones, was the younger daughter of Elsa (née Bessant) Collins (died 1962) and Joseph William Collins (died 1988).

Collins was born in South Africa to a Jewish father and an Anglican mother. Collins was the middle child, with a younger brother, Bill, and an older sister, Joan Collins (actor and novelist) (who became a property agent). Collins was expelled from Francis Holland School, a private girls’ day school in London when she was 15 years old. She had a short romance with Marlon Brando, who was 29 at the time.

Personal Life

Collins was born in the United Kingdom and raised in the United States (by naturalization, from 6 May 1960). She married Wallace Austin in 1960, but the couple separated in 1964. Austin’s addiction to medications prescribed for manic mania led to their divorce, and he died of a planned overdose a year after they divorced. Tracy, the couple’s only child, was born in 1961. Collins married for the second time in 1965, this time to Oscar Lerman, the proprietor of the Ad-Lib and Tramp nightclubs in New York City. Her sister Joan and her husband at the time, Anthony Newley, hosted the wedding at their house. Tiffany (born 1967) and Rory (born 1969) were Collins and Lerman’s two daughters (born 1969).

Jackie Collins with her husband Oscar Lerman

Early Career

Collins was born in Hampstead, London, in 1937. Elsa (née Bessant) Collins (died 1962) and Joseph William Collins (died 1988) were theatrical agents who represented Dame Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Sir Tom Jones. Collins’ father was Jewish and her mother was Anglican.

Collins has a younger brother, Bill, and an older sister, Joan Collins (actor and novelist) (who became a property agent). Collins was expelled from Francis Holland School, an independent day school for girls in London when she was 15 years old. She had a short romance with Marlon Brando, 29, around this time. The World Is Full of Married Men (1968), her debut novel, was a best-seller. She claimed she was a “school dropout” and “juvenile delinquent” when she was 15 years old, four decades later: She commented, “I’m pleased I got all of it out of my system at such a young age,” adding that she “never pretended to be a literary writer.”

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Professional Career

Collins had started numerous works of fiction but never finished them, and it was only until her second husband Oscar Lerman pushed her to do so that she finished her first novel. He informed her, “You’re a storyteller.” After the publication of her debut novel, The World is Full of Married Men, romance author Barbara Cartland slammed it as “nasty, dirty, and sickening,” accusing Collins of “making every pervert in Britain.” Although the book was banned in Australia and South Africa, the controversy boosted sales in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Stud, her second novel, was released in 1969. It was also included in best-seller lists. Sunday Simmons & Charlie Brick (originally published under the title The Hollywood Zoo in the UK and then retitled Sinners worldwide in 1984) was Collins’ third novel, and it was released in 1971 and hit the best-seller lists once again. Collins’s first novel set in the United States was this one. In 1974, Lovehead arrived (retitled as The Love Killers in 1989). This was Collins’ first step into the realm of organised crime, a field that she would go on to become immensely successful. Collins later released The World Is Full of Divorced Women in 1975 (which was unconnected to her first work) and Lovers & Gamblers in 1977, which was about rock/soul sensation Al King.

Collins tried his hand at screenwriting in the late 1970s. The Stud (1978), based on her second book, was co-written by her and starred her older sister Joan as the gold-digging adulteress Fontaine Khaled. Collins then created the script for the film adaptation of her debut novel, The World Is Full of Married Men (1980). Her eighth novel, The Bitch (1979), was a sequel to The Stud and was adapted into a popular 1979 film, with Joan Collins repeating her role. Around the same period, Collins developed an original screenplay for the film Yesterday’s Hero (not based on any of her novels) (1979).

Collins and her family relocated to Los Angeles full-time in the 1980s, where she continued to write about the “rich and famous.” She said, “There is a spot you should be at a given moment if you want to be successful. It was Los Angeles in the 1980s.” Chances were her next book (1981). Lucky Santangelo, the “dangerously attractive” daughter of a mafia, was one of her most well-known characters.

Collins gathered information and experience while living in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, which she used to write her most commercially successful novel, Hollywood Wives (1983), which debuted at number one on The New York Times best-seller list. The novel, marketed as a “scandalous exposé,” sold over 15 million copies and elevated Collins to a prominent position, putting her on par with her sister Joan, whose own career had taken off thanks to her appearance on the television programme Dynasty.

Produced by Aaron Spelling and starring Candice Bergen, Stefanie Powers, Angie Dickinson, Anthony Hopkins, Suzanne Somers, and Rod Steiger, Hollywood Wives was adapted into a television miniseries in 1985. Collins subsequently alleged that she was never contacted during production and that she did not agree with any of the casting selections, despite being labelled as a “creative consultant.”

She went on to write the sequel to Chances, Lucky (1985), as well as Hollywood Husbands (1986). In 1990, Collins released Lady Boss, her third Lucky Santangelo novel, and authored and co-produced Lucky Chances, a television miniseries based on her first two Lucky Santangelo novels and starring Nicollette Sheridan and Sandra Bullock. Collins’ husband of 26 years, Oscar Lerman, died of cancer in 1992, leaving her widowed.

She authored and produced another miniseries based on the Lady Boss novel around this period, with Kim Delaney in the major role. Collins’ best-seller streak continued with American Star (1993), Hollywood Kids (1994), and Vendetta: Lucky’s Revenge, his fourth Santangelo novel (1996). In 1993, she was on the topic of This Is Your Life, when Michael Aspel shocked her.

In 1998, she attempted to break into chat show television with Jackie Collins’ Hollywood, but it was a failure. She also created the novel Thrill (1998) and a four-part mini-novel series called L.A. Connections, which was published every six weeks in a newspaper and featured a new heroine in the form of investigative journalist Madison Castelli. Dangerous Kiss, the fifth Lucky Santangelo novel, was released in 1999. Collins’ busiest decade was the 2000s when she released eight best-sellers, more than any other decade in her career. Collins revived Madison Castelli in a new novel, Lethal Seduction, published in 2000.

Hollywood Wives: The New Generation, which she published in 2001, was transformed into a 2003 television movie starring Farrah Fawcett, Melissa Gilbert, and Robin Givens. (Collins was an executive producer on the film.) Deadly Embrace, a new Madison Castelli book, was released in 2002, and Hollywood Divorces was released in 2003. Collins presented a series of television specials for E! Entertainment Television called Jackie Collins Presents in 2004. Collins proceeded with Lovers & Players (2006), Drop Dead Beautiful (2007), the sixth Lucky Santangelo novel, and Married Lovers (2008), which is about the affairs of a female personal trainer named Cameron Paradise. The film Poor Little Bitch Girl (2009) followed, which was based on a concept Collins had for a television series about heiresses that was never completed.

Amber Entertainment collaborated with UK grocery company Tesco to produce Paris Connections (2010), a direct-to-DVD film based on Collins’ L.A. Connections series of mini-novels. Charles Dance, Trudie Styler, and Nicole Steinwedell feature in the film (as Madison Castelli). Collins worked as a co-producer on the film, and three more Madison Castelli movies are in the works. Collins continues to create stories featuring Lucky Santangelo, including Goddess of Vengeance.

The Power Trip, her 29th novel, was released in February 2013. Confessions of a Wild Child was released in February 2014, and a film deal was announced before the book was even released. The Lucky Santangelo Cookbook (2014) is named after the protagonist of nine Collins novels, who is frequently seen cooking complex gourmet delicacies for her close friends (and who watched her father throw a plate of food at her mother as a child). Collins’ final book, The Santangelos (2015), was a finale to the Santangelo trilogy she started with Chances.

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Death

Collins died of breast cancer two weeks before her 78th birthday on September 19, 2015. She had been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer more than six years before she died, but she kept her disease to herself nearly exclusively. She allegedly notified her sister Joan Collins two weeks before her death and went from Los Angeles to London nine days before her death to participate in the ITV talk show Loose Women.