Joan Collins & Isabella Rossellini Own Cannes at Any Age

Joan Collins didn’t just show up to Cannes. She reminded everyone how it’s supposed to be done.

The 92-year-old Dame swept across the red carpet at the Palais des Festivals on May 12 in a sculptural white custom Stéphane Rolland Haute Couture gown — strapless, with dramatic petal-like ruffles at the bodice, a middle slit and a sweeping train that commanded every inch of the carpet. She paired it with black opera gloves, diamond jewelry, and diamond-encrusted needle-toe pumps. The result was pure Alexis Carrington: imperious, immaculate, utterly herself. The only difference between this and her Dynasty heyday is that Collins has gotten better at it.

“It was very exciting. I had my glam squad do me up, the hair, the makeup,” she said the morning after, seated at the Carlton Beach in a thigh-length patterned summer dress and hexagonal sunglasses the size of tea saucers, her famous mane perfectly set. “I looked — well, I won’t say how I looked, but you can read what they wrote.”

Sitting opposite her was Isabella Rossellini — draped in a loose black-and-white patterned outfit with flashes of bright orange lining, her trademark pixie cut entirely unbothered by Cannes excess. The two were there to talk about My Duchess, the film that brings them together onscreen for the first time, and they talked like women who’ve been friends for years rather than first-time co-stars.

The Film That Took 30 Years to Make

Rossellini skipped the red carpet entirely. “I actually find it very intimidating,” she admitted. “It’s a whole production now. It’s not like when my mother [Ingrid Bergman] went to the Oscars. She wore her own jewelry, maybe something special that my father had bought for her.”

“Well, I wore my own jewelry last night,” Collins shot back. “Because I didn’t want a security guard following me around. Which is what happens when they give you something to wear.”

Directed by Mike Newell — the man behind Four Weddings and a Funeral — and written by Louise Fennell, My Duchess tells the story of Wallis Simpson’s final years. Not the glamorous Duchess of Windsor who captivated the world when King Edward VIII abdicated his throne for her — but the woman who came after. After the Duke’s death in 1972, Simpson spent the last eight or nine years of her life blind, deaf and deteriorating, under the total control of her exploitative lawyer Suzanne Blum. Collins plays Simpson. Rossellini plays Blum.

“People thought she had died, but she hadn’t,” Collins said. “This lawyer came in and destroyed her. She spent the last eight or nine years of her life blind, deaf and dying. And no one knows that.”

Collins has been trying to tell this story for three decades. In the early 1990s, she met Mohamed Al-Fayed — then the owner of Harrods and father of Dodi Fayed — and mentioned her fascination with Wallis Simpson. “He said, ‘I own her house in France.’ So I went there.” She was shown around by Sydney Johnson, the Windsors’ Bahamas-born former valet. The house was immaculate, she said, just as it appears in the film — two mannequins, one of the Duchess and one of the Duke, he in a kilt, she in Chanel.

The project finally got made after Collins pitched it to Broadway impresario John Gore — the producer behind Hamilton and The Book of Mormon — at a King’s Trust dinner in late 2023. His company, John Gore Studios, is financing the film in its first feature venture. Embankment Films is handling sales at Cannes.

The Joan Collins No One Has Seen Before

For fans expecting Dynasty-era Joan, My Duchess will be something of a shock. As Simpson declines onscreen, Collins appears frail, diminished, stripped of the poise and polish that have defined her public image for 70 years. It’s a performance that requires her to dismantle the very myth she spent a lifetime building.

“Joan has this combination that I have never seen before,” Rossellini said. “She is beautiful, has great beauty, great glamour, but absolutely no vanity whatsoever.”

Collins didn’t argue the point. “No, I am not vain. I have never been vain. I’ll answer the door in shorts with no makeup. I don’t care.”

There is, however, one unmistakable Joan Collins moment buried in the darkness — when Simpson finally snaps and lashes out at Blum. Collins described it with obvious delight: “I say the F-word one time in the film, in that scene. As I was doing it, I thought: ‘I just told Ingrid Bergman’s daughter to F-off!’ “

The personal resonance runs deep. Collins admits she feels a genuine kinship with Simpson, who was relentlessly targeted by the tabloids of her era. “This film is a bit of me getting back [at the press], because I had a lot of problems in my time,” she said. “They always saw me as the bad girl because of the roles I played. When I was in Dynasty, the press would say: ‘She’s just like that,’ and I wasn’t!”

Two Survivors, One Conversation

The morning took a lovely detour when Collins turned to Rossellini and said, almost out of nowhere: “Your father and I almost worked together.” She launched into the story of Sea Wife, the 1957 drama she made opposite Richard Burton. Roberto Rossellini had originally been brought in to direct — until he got into a week-long standoff with Darryl Zanuck over whether Collins’ nun character should have a romantic relationship with Burton’s. Roberto thought it was more true to life. The studio disagreed. They played Scrabble on the beach while the argument raged. Roberto eventually walked.

“My father really liked you,” Rossellini said.

Collins had posted a photo with Roberto Rossellini on Instagram on May 8, what would have been his 120th birthday. “She’s very big on Instagram,” Rossellini noted. “Oh, you have more followers than me,” Collins retorted.

What strikes you, sitting with these two women, is how lightly they carry the weight of everything they’ve survived. Both have navigated decades of an industry that treats women as disposable. Both have had periods out of the spotlight. Both are still here, still working, still sharp.

Collins started in this business at 17, when her father told her she’d be lucky to work until she was 27. Seventy-five years later, she says she’s had “probably the longest-ever career in show business. I’m certainly the oldest working.” The secret, she says, was surprisingly unglamorous: “We had good families. We never had problems with alcohol or drugs. And we always wanted to work.”

By the end of My Duchess, there is almost nothing left of the Joan Collins audiences think they know — no makeup, no jewelry, no image. Just the actress. At 92, after more than seven decades onscreen, that turns out to be more than enough.