Joan Collins is opening up about the abuse that she suffered at the hands of her first husband, Maxwell Reed.
In a new BBC documentary, the “Dynasty” star claimed that Reed spiked her drink on their first date when she was age 17 and he was 31.
READ MORE: Joan Collins Reveals Why John Forsythe Didn’t Speak To Her For A Whole Season Of ‘Dynasty’
“The next thing I knew I was flat out on the sofa and he was raping me. In those days, my mother would have said I was taken advantage of,” Collins recalled. “Now, we call it date rape.”
The actress said she later wed Reed “out of shame” in 1952.
During their marriage, which lasted for four years, Reed would ask Collins to sleep with other men for money.
“We were in Les Ambassadeurs, a terribly chic nightclub in Mayfair,” she continued. “Max had a habit of gravitating towards rich, elderly men, and I was starting to get a vague idea of what this was all about. Max told me, ‘He’ll pay you £10,000 for one night—and I can even watch.’ I looked at my handsome, loathsome husband and began to cry. ‘Never in a million years.’ I went home to Mummy.”
Collins also spoke about being a “survivor” in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
“I survived being a young actress when practically all the men were predators,” she added. “They used to say female stars were finished at 27, but here I am after seven decades in the business to tell you a thing or two about how to survive the perils of the profession.”
