Dame Joan Collins speaks out on 'hateful' cancel culture: 'People should be allowed opinions'

Dame Joan Collins has spoken out against the rise in “cancel culture”, calling it “hateful” and saying it has made her reluctant to share her own opinions.

Collins was being interviewed by her friend Piers Morgan for The Mail On Sunday’s You magazine when she shared her worries about people being targeted over expressing their opinions.

Asked what she thought about “cancel culture”, she said: “It’s hateful. I think people should be allowed to have their opinions without people cancelling them, particularly at schools and universities.”

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The Dynasty actor mentioned that she had been on the receiving end of abuse about her own politics in the past.

She admitted: “I stopped saying anything political on social media, because I got so much hate mail when I mentioned I’d gone to an event for Nigel Farage, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, this isn’t worth it.’ So I will keep my political opinions to myself and my friends.”

Collins also told Morgan about some of her brushes with other famous people during her 70-year career on screen.

Talking about working with Bette Davis in The Virgin Queen, she said that she and her co-stars used to try to hide from attracting Davis’s attention on set.

Branding Davis “pretty rude”, she added that “she was a terrifying old actress who didn’t like young pretty girls”.

Collins, who has been married five times, said she had once turned down advances from Bobby Kennedy and called him “a gentleman”.

She refused to go into detail on the incident, saying that she didn’t want to hurt his widow Ethel in case she heard about it.

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The star said: “That was one of the things I said to him: ‘I’m married, you’re married.’ But he was so charismatic.”

Collins, 87, has been married to theatre producer Percy Gibson for 18 years and in the interview listed Peter Holm as the worst of her five husbands.

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