THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH ... JUNE 20TH 2014...

Joan Collins chooses good make-up over surgery

Joan Collins’s beauty mantra is “base, not botox”.

She looks amazing and she largely puts it down to good makeup.

While many leading actresses of today have had cosmetic procedures, Joan likes to stick to her own motto to look good.

“I’ve always said ‘base, not Botox.’ With the proper application of makeup, you can take ten to 15 years off your age—easily,” she told WWD.

But it wasn’t always this way. When the Dynasty star first started making movies, she was very bohemian, and wouldn’t wear any makeup in-between filming. And while her hair is now perfectly coiffed at all times, back then she had bangs that skimmed her nose, much to the chagrin of the studio executives.

“’Oh my God, I can’t even look at you, you’re so hideous!’” Joan recalls the director of her 1955 film, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, saying. “’Put some makeup on….And what is with the hair?’ I was one of the last contract ladies at Twentieth Century Fox and the studios laid down the law.”

Thankfully help was at hand in the form of Allan “Whitey” Snyder, Marilyn Monroe’s personal makeup artist. He taught Joan all the tricks of the trade and to this day, all her contracts stipulate that she must do her own makeup.

“The only time I don’t is when I play a character role, like the Wicked Witch for the BBC. Other than that, I do my own,” she revealed.

Joan is now sharing her beauty wisdom via her own cosmetics line, Joan Collins Timeless Beauty. The brand launched in the UK in March and is a makeup, skin care and fragrance collection.

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