Meghan isn’t really in my consciousness says Dame Joan Collins but Kate ‘never puts a foot wrong: Dame reveals what she really thinks of the royals as she prepares to play Wallis Simpson in biopic

As one of Britain’s leading veteran actresses, she is preparing to play the most controversial member of the Royal Family.

Dame Joan Collins will take the role of Wallis Simpson in a biopic of the final years of her life, and says the American divorcee for whom Edward VIII abdicated was ‘somewhat maligned’.

But the outspoken Dame unsurprisingly has some rather acerbic opinions about the latest generation of female Royals, too. 

‘Meghan isn’t really in my consciousness,’ she tells The Mail on Sunday’s Liz Jones, dismissively, in an interview today for You magazine. But she adds: ‘Catherine never puts a foot wrong.’

Five-times-married Dame Joan, who celebrated her 90th birthday in May, gave the delightfully charismatic interview from her villa in St Tropez, and she airs her unfiltered views on everything from cancel culture to Botox, the menopause and why modern actresses who bare all on the red carpet are simply ‘showing off’.

The outspoken Dame unsurprisingly has some rather acerbic opinions about the latest generation of female Royals, too (Pictured: Catherine, Princess of Wales and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attending Wimbledon in 2018)

‘They think it’s empowering,’ she says, of the latter. ‘But I see it as showing off. You know your breasts and the crack in your bottom will get you more space in the papers and the most likes.’

Despite being known for her glamour and enduring good looks the star – pictured right in her photoshoot for You – insists she doesn’t believe in Botox, surgery or even too much make-up.

‘For last night’s party, I put on some darker base as my body is brown so I have to,’ she explains. ‘Some eyeshadow. I never wear false lashes or mascara. I have friends who have lashes on permanently. They look strange with a pale face and spidery lashes.

‘I mean, these reality stars all have lashes, pumped-up lips and frankly I can’t tell them apart! Does that sound horrible? Take it out! Judi Dench looks fabulous.’

While her late sister, the novelist Jackie Collins – who died of breast cancer in 2015 – had a nose job, Dame Joan says she has had nothing done. 

‘I tried Botox once – this was the late 1980s. I screamed and rushed out and I’ve never been back. I’m very happy with the way I look.’

She puts her beauty down to good nutrition and exercise, and rolls her eyes at celebrities who use the new so-called weight loss jabs such as Ozempic. 

Dame Joan Collins will take the role of Wallis Simpson (pictured) in a biopic of the final years of her life, and says the American divorcee for whom Edward VIII abdicated was ‘somewhat maligned’

‘There’s too much obsession about treatments and whatever that stuff is they’re sticking in their bodies to make them thinner,’ she says.

And she is unsympathetic about the fuss being made by menopause campaigners. Insisting it ‘wasn’t a problem’ for her generation, she adds that she used HRT for ‘20 years… I thought I’d turn into a crone but I didn’t’.

She is certainly no crone. She married her fifth, and final, husband Percy Gibson in 2002. Age, however, is something she prefers not to discuss.

‘I don’t want to be identified with an age group,’ she says.

‘It’s a question of your physicality and mental abilities. My life is really good. I was born with a happy gene.’

As well as the new acting role, she is set to embark on a 12-night UK tour next month to promote her memoir, Joan Collins: Behind The Shoulder Pads. ‘It’s hard work being an actress,’ she says.

Read the full interview in tomorrow’s issue of You magazine.