Best-selling British novelist Jackie Collins has died of breast cancer at 77.
“It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful, dynamic and one of a kind mother, Jackie Collins, who died of breast cancer today,” her family said in a statement posted on Facebook. “She lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over 4 decades. She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words.”
The sister of Dynasty actress Joan Collins wrote 32 novels, selling more than 500 million copies — eight of which were adapted for films, such as The Stud and The Bitch (which starred Joan). Aaron Spelling adapted her famous Hollywood Wives for a three-part miniseries in the 1980s, starring Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson, and Suzanne Somers. From Biography:
Jackie Collins has been called a “raunchy moralist” by the late director Louis Malle and “Hollywood’s own Marcel Proust” by Vanity Fair magazine. . . . She is known for giving her readers an unrivaled insiders knowledge of Hollywood and the glamorous lives and loves of the rich, famous, and infamous! “I write about real people in disguise,” she says. “If anything, my characters are toned down — the truth is much more bizarre.”
Collins is survived by her daughters Tracy, Tiffany, and Rory — and sister Joan Collins.