The Queen of Glamour, and still notorious for playing super-bitch Alexis in Dynasty, Joan Collins tells Steve Pratt about make-up, husbands, and blending in with the crowd.

IT seems entirely appropriate that the one of the last questions to Joan Collins is about make-up. Here she is, bright and breezy at ten o'clock on a Monday morning, looking like glamour personified.

When you tell people you've been to see Joan Collins, what they want to know isn't about her work or her love life but what she looks like.

She has always been as much about looks as acting, from her early Rank starlet days through stripping off in The Stud to her time in shoulder pads in TV soap Dynasty.

Perhaps it's ungallant to say but, despite being 70 this year, she doesn't look her age. Part of that is down to knowing how to present herself - immaculately made up and coiffeured, wearing a tight red leather suit with a slashed skirt.

Collins expects, and gets, respect. That's partly because she knows how to play the game, willing to go along with the media circus that accompanies her.

When asked to name her favourite part, she opts for Helen in a TV mini-series called Sins because the woman was full of vitality and joie de vivre. Collins is much the same, facing a room full of journalists as she embarks on a 15-week British stage tour - that brings her to Newcastle - and answer any question, no matter how silly or intrusive.

She takes the rumours and the gossip about herself with a pinch of salt, calling some tabloid stories ridiculous. Like the one that claimed she'd walked into a restaurant, slipped on a lettuce leaf and fallen down in front of the diners. But she bears no grudges. "There are so many newspapers and you have to fill them with something," she says.

Entering the Cinderella bar of the London Palladium, she exclaims: "What a lot of people". I bet the organisers would have been in trouble if there hadn't been a full house to mark her return to the stage in Full Circle. This is a French boulevard comedy of the 1950s by Alan Melville that director Patrick Garland says is the perfect vehicle to "re-introduce Joan Collins to the English theatre". He neglects to mention that her last London appearance, three years ago, was not a great success.

In the play, she plays a bestselling novelist who confesses to her children that the man they call daddy isn't their father after all. In the interests of respectability, a search for a suitable father figure ensues.

"She's a bestselling author, which is like me. She has three children, which I have, but has never been married, which I have," declares Collins.

The cast won't be attempting French accents, the set is very well decorated and she will wear some nice frocks. So much for motivation, what about the prospect of touring? "I'm a gypsy at heart," she says.

"I've taken quite a few holidays to get prepared because it's going to be tough. But so what? That's what it is in this business sometimes."

No, she says, theatre isn't more daunting than film or TV. "I'm used to them all. It's only daunting that you have to keep it fresh. Whereas in TV and film you only have to keep it fresh for two, five or ten takes," she says.

"I came into this business to be a stage actress, not a film actress or TV personality. I went to Rada and wanted to end up in the footsteps of Vivien Leigh.

"I love touring, but I don't want to go out for 14 weeks doing Medea and tearing my hair out and feeling shattered. I want to entertain people."

THEATRE managers fearing diva-like demands can rest assured that Collins won't be making outrageous requests for extras. "I don't have my dressing rooms decorated, I'm not Beyonce," she says. "I do make them very homely because I take a lot of things that I travel with. Pictures of the family, plants, cushions - and my make-up, of course, which takes up an entire table."

Husband Percy Gibson will be on tour with her too, as the production's company manager. He became her fifth husband three years ago, the latest entry in a complicated and well-documented love life. A reporter from Kent, looking for a local angle, raises the name of "Bungalow" Bill Wiggins, one of her exes. She wants verification of a rumour that Collins was once seen in a pub in Kent. "I have no recollection of visiting Kent," she says pointedly.

The questioner doesn't know when to stop. "Do you keep up with Bill Wiggins at all?" she asks, inviting more than a few sharp words from Collins.

The actress gives her one of her best Alexis-in-Dynasty sweet smiles and replies, "No," followed by, "Next".

She's more willing to share what she's learnt about men over the years. "Got a couple of hours?," she wonders.

"They are wonderful, and some are horrible. You can't generalise about men, just as you can't about people. Men are stronger - that's the only thing I will give them."

She might not be the best person to ask about the secret of good relationships in the light of her marital record, but that doesn't stop her offering suggestions: "Just being each other's best friend and sharing everything. Being on the same wavelength and being each other's partner. I think friendship is incredibly important."

The subject of make-up is never far away. She has, after all, written several beauty books (and reminds us that the latest is now out in paperback, price £9.99). The secret of looking good for her is being able to be quite disciplined about eating good food and the right food. That came from her mother, who insisted she eat her brocolli and not too many sweets.

Career-wise, she's most proud of having kept working since the age of 16, after her father - theatrical agent Joe Collins - told her that it would all be over by the time she was 25. "I've combined an acting and a writing career. I am most proud of being a survivor, of being able to work and be able to do this terrific play," she says.

There's the pro in her coming out again, the ability to turn the conversation back to the project being promoted - and to plug the fact she has a new novel coming out too. Touring won't hamper her writing. She'll still put pen to paper on tour "because I'm that sort of person. My mother used to call me Miss Perpetual Motion." She might even write a diary of the Full Circle tour.

AN actress's career is a few high points followed by many lows, she says, and she sees no point in going into the business just to become a celebrity. "If that's what you want to do it for, it's very short-lived. People think it's all glamour and champagne," she says. "I had a very down-to-earth father. Because he was in the theatre business, he knew how tough it was and instilled that in me before I went off to drama school.

"Achievement as an actor is to continue going on and not fall into a trough of despair when you're not working. I'm not that much in the public eye at all. I rarely go to premieres. I can walk down London easily, go into Waitrose and Marks & Spencer. Sometimes I'm recognised, sometimes I'm not."

Seeing some incredulous looks among her audience at the idea of Joan Collins being able to walk around unnoticed, she adds: "Obviously I dress in a more laid back fashion."

But does she leave off her make-up?, I wonder.

* Full Circle plays at Newcastle Theatre Royal from May 17 to 22. Tickets 0870 9055060.

Published: 10/04/2004