Jackie Collins has died aged 77.
Advertisement
Publicist Melody Korenbrot says Collins died of breast cancer on Saturday in Los Angeles.
She was described as a trailblazer for women in fiction, according to a statement from her family given to People Magazine in the US.
Collin’s novels, filled with glamour and high drama, sold more than 500 million copies.
The Santangelos novelist and sister of legendary actress Joan Collins, was 77 and had been suffering from breast cancer for the past six and a half years.
The book, which is a tale of a woman who cheats on her husband and another who likes sex with married men was “way before its time”, Collins later said.
Tributes have begun to pour in for the star after her shock death. Lucky, the daughter of former gangster Gino Santangelo, is 15 and ready to break out from the protected world Gino has kept her in.
“If anything, my characters are toned down – the truth is much more freaky “, she wrote on her website. “I know a lot about looking after people when they are sick”, she said.
Collins, who sat down with World Health Organization on September 14 at her Beverly Hills home for what would be her last interview, had no regrets about the decision to keep her cancer journey private while she embraced a very full life until her very last days.
Sky News presenter Eamonn Holmes joined the tributes saying: “Over years of interviewing appearing with her, even travelling together – she was just lovely”. I knew he’d had a fantastic life.
Asked by the AP in 2011 if she was dating anyone, Collins said “I have a man for every occasion”.
The family requests that any donations in lieu of flowers be made out to the Penny Brohn Cancer Care charity in the UK and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Organisation in the United States.
Advertisement
Services will be held privately, according to the family.
