Joan Collins talks past rape, says stars don't have to tolerate sexual harassment
Joan Collins survived being drugged and raped early in her career but insists that tolerating sexual harassment is a choice.
"I only married him because I was so embarrassed that he had taken my virginity," Collins, 85, told The Observer of her first husband, Maxwell Reed, who she claimed raped her on their first date when she was just 18-years-old.
"He took me to a place called the Country Club in Hanover Square. We walked up lots of stairs to a small, candle-lit apartment where he asked me what I wanted to drink and gave me a rum and Coke. It was a Mickey Finn. I was drugged. He said, 'I am going to have a bath,' which I thought was very strange," she recalled.
"He then said, 'Take a look at this book, I think you will find it interesting.' Of course, it was full of disgusting, pornographic photographs," she continued.
"Now, any smart girl today would have got out of there and run down those stairs faster than a speeding bullet, but not little innocent, stupid Joan Collins, who stayed there and looked at the book. The next thing I knew, I was on the sofa and that was it. Then I was throwing up into a bucket."
Despite her own experience, the "American Horror Story" star has mixed feelings about the #MeToo movement for not doing enough to help abused women — and for allegedly victimizing women who she thinks should be able to defend themselves.
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"When people ask why I wasn’t speaking out about this – I’ve been speaking out about it for 40 years," she said but added that she'd have never gone to a producer's hotel room. "It seems to me actresses who are saying, you know, 'I went up to this producer and he took his d—k out and I froze.' I mean, I'm sorry, you don't freeze," she said. "You go, 'Stop that, I'm leaving.' I just gave them a knee in the groin. It's hardly suffering. You just didn't put up with it."
"My daughter Tara is a pioneer for women's rights," she said, adding that Tara worked in a women's shelter for three years.
"These women in the refuges are having to hide their identities. They've got children and babies and then the husbands try to find them," she said. "I remember Tara was crying to me about a year and a half ago because one of the women had gone back and been murdered — that's what happens. Women are abused all over the world. Everybody's very adamant and strong and #MeToo here in Hollywood, but I don't see them opening refuges for women who have been abused."
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The #MeToo and Time's Up movements aim to provide some aid to women in need: Tarana Burke, who founded the #MeToo movement nearly a decade ago, has said the hashtag was created to help women in communities that lacked rape crisis centers or other venues for support; The Time's Up Legal Defense Fund offers financial support to women who claim to have experienced sexual harassment or misconduct in the workplace.
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