Jackie Collins, Best-Selling Author, Dies at 77
Collins died of breast cancer, family says,
— -- Jackie Collins, the best-selling author and sister of actress Joan Collins, has died of breast cancer, her family said. She was 77.
"It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful, dynamic and one of a kind mother, Jackie Collins, who died of breast cancer today," the Collins family said in a statement. "She lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over 4 decades. She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words."
Collins, who was called a "raunchy moralist" by French director Louis Malle, sold more than 500 million copies of her books worldwide and had more than two-dozen New York Times bestsellers.
Her novels, many of which were made into movies or TV mini-series, include "The World Is Full of Married Men," "Hollywood Wives," "The World Is Full of Divorced Men," "Lucky," and "Hollywood Husbands."
She broke into publishing in the late 1960s and published steadily throughout the 1970s, but it was not until "Hollywood Wives" hit the stores in 1983 that she really became a star. The book sold more than 15 million copies and became a hit TV miniseries.
In a 2010 "Good Morning America" interview, Collins said she was inspired early on.
"I always knew I was going to be a writer, and so I watched everything and I lived in this kind of Melrose house, kind of apartment complex," she said. "And the people who lived next to me were the people I wrote about in 'Hollywood Wives.'"
She said her books have inspired new generations to love reading.
"All these years, I've never been out of print, so I get a lot of young readers, they come to me when they're like 15, they come on my Twitter account, or they come to my Facebook, and they go -- you know, I stole my mother's copy and I read it under the covers and it was so much fun and now I love reading," she said.