Joan Collins Recalls Marrying Ex-Husband Maxwell Reed After He Allegedly Raped Her

The 90-year-old actress claimed the rape happened when she was 17 but "the equivalent mentally of 12"

Joan Collins is reflecting on her decision to marry Maxwell Reed after he allegedly raped her.

The Dynasty star, 90, claimed she was raped by Reed — who died in 1974 at age 55 — when she was a 17-year-old virgin. Collins alleged the incident happened after the actor, then 31, spiked her rum and Coke at his apartment.

“I was 17, but I was the equivalent mentally of 12,” she told The Guardian. “We did not have sex education. I never saw a penis till I got raped and then I refused to look at it."

"My mother told me men only want one thing and I guess she was right," she added.

Related: Joan Collins' Life in Pictures

Collins — who is promoting her new book, Behind the Shoulder Pads — went on to marry Reed in 1952 “because I come from a generation where if you’re going to have sex, you get married,” she told the publication.

The actress previously detailed the alleged rape in the 2022 BBC documentary This Is Joan Collins. In the doc, she claimed, "The next thing I knew I was flat out on the sofa and he was raping me. In those days, my mother would have said I was taken advantage of. Now, we call it date rape.”

She also admitted the pair’s four-year marriage — which ended in 1956 — was born “out of shame.”

Related: Who Is Joan Collins' Husband? All About Percy Gibson

Recalling how the split came about, Collins said it occurred after a night out at the “terribly chic nightclub” Les Ambassadeurs in London.

“Max had a habit of gravitating towards rich, elderly men, and I was starting to get a vague idea of what this was all about," she shared in the doc. "Max told me, ‘He’ll pay you £10,000 for one night—and I can even watch.’ I looked at my handsome, loathsome husband and began to cry. ‘Never in a million years.’ I went home to Mummy.”

In her interview with The Guardian, Collins detailed how she moved on following her divorce from Reed, sharing, “I lived with several men, one after another. I was a serial monogamist.”

Related: Joan Collins Opens Up About Ex-Husbands and Marrying Younger Men: 'Love Has No Limits'

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“I realized I was unconventional,” she continued. “I thought: there’s nothing wrong with this. I lived with Sydney Chaplin, then Arthur Loew Jr, then I had an affair with a married man – it was utter hell.”

In 1963, Collins married British pop star Anthony Newley, with whom she had two children, daughter Tara later that year and son Alexander in 1965. However, the two ultimately divorced in 1971. Shortly after, Collins married Beatles record producer Ron Kass in 1972 and their daughter Katy was born the same year. They were married until 1983. Collins’ fourth marriage to Swedish singer Peter Holm also ended in divorce after they were together from 1985 to 1987.

For more than two decades, Collins has been married to producer Percy Gibson. "Percy is the most honorable man I've ever met," she told PEOPLE in March 2002, shortly after the pair married that February.

"I kissed a lot of frogs before I found my prince," Collins later wrote in her 2011 memoir The World According to Joan.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

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