Joan Collins says studio head offered her Liz Taylor's Cleopatra role if she slept with him

https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/joan-collins-says-studio-head-offered-her-liz-taylors-cleopatra-role-if-she-slept-with-him.2349437/

Joan Collins says studio head offered her Liz Taylor's Cleopatra role if she slept with him, Dynasty co-star John Forsyth was a 'sexist misogynist' and lover Warren Beatty was so vain

*Joan Collins opened up about the sexual advances and demands made by powerful Hollywood executives during the golden era of films

*'I can put you up in an apartment and I will come and visit you and you'll not only get all the best roles at Fox, but we will see that you get Cleopatra,' said one exec

*Collins, 85, declined, saying: 'I was never, ever, ever going to settle forgiving my body to some old man for a role, or even a young man or anybody'

*In that same interview she spoke about her husbands and great loves like Warren Beatty, Harry Belafonte and at least one of her five husbands

'The head of 20th Century Fox at the time, Buddy Adler, and the chairman of the board — a Greek gentleman old enough to be my grandfather — bombarded me with propositions and promises that the role was mine if I would be "nice" to them,' wrote Collins.

'It was a euphemism prevalent in Hollywood. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t — the very thought of these old men was utterly repugnant. So, I dodged and I dived, and hid from them around the lot and made excuses while undergoing endless screen tests for the role of Egypt’s Queen.'

She then recalled the story she told on CBS, only in her column identifying that man as Adler, who quickly shot back as she tried to get out of the situation.

'Honey, you have quite a sense of humor,' Collins recalled Adler saying when she went to grab her agent.

'And a sense of humor is all you’ll ever get from me,' replied Collins, who soon found herself out of work while Taylor swept in to play the Egyptian queen.