Hollywood doc put Collins on amphetamines
Joan Collins says she spent six months on amphetamines after a Hollywood doctor gave them to her to lose weight.
The Dynasty star told TV hosts Richard and Judy the drugs kept her awake for nights on end when she was first starting out in Hollywood.
But it only clicked that the pills contained amphetamines after she had been taking them for six months.
She told TV host Richard Madeley, on tonight’s Channel 4 chat show: “When I first started out in Hollywood I was a buxom young thing with a curvy figure. I was told to lose half a stone. I was nine stone at the time.”
The 71-year-old said: “They wanted me to get down to eight-and-a-half-stone and I went to the studio doctor who gave me this little bottle of green pills.
“I think he was the same doctor who treated Judy Garland! I wondered why I couldn’t sleep. I now know they were amphetamines.”
She said: “Although they gave me sleeping pills, I did this for six months before I realised.”
Judy Finnigan told the actress, who is promoting her new novel: “Thank God you didn’t go the same way as Judy Garland.”
The Wizard of Oz star died after a barbiturates overdose in 1969.
Collins played super-bitch, shoulder-pad wearing Alexis in the 1980s US soap Dynasty.
She has appeared in more than 80 films, including The Bitch, The Stud and The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones.
During the later 1980s and 90s, her work switched from TV and film to theatre.
