In her private life, she has known plenty, to be sure. Collins bedded Marlon Brando when she was young, was briefly married to a drug addict, then wed a nightlife impresario, became widowed after some 25 years, and nursed her third fiancé through a terminal illness. When asked the status of her love life today, she offers: “Pretty good, thanks. I live my life like a man. I have the freedom to do exactly what I want, and I have my little black book.”
Collins hints that she may write a memoir, but then again, maybe not, because she has already woven her best real-life material into the plots of her 29 “bonkbuster,” as she calls them, tales. “Observation has been my life. I came to Hollywood when I was 15, and I was a wild child. When you’re that age and you’re not bad-looking, you just experience everything—everything. You see people for who they are. And if you’re street-smart, you survive.”
