Joan Collins has slammed Harry Styles for the way he behaved at the 2019 Met Gala—and revealed exactly what he did in her latest memoir.
The British actress, now 90, starred opposite Bette Davis and Paul Newman in Hollywood movies of the 1950s and 1960s before becoming better known for playing Alexis Colby in the Eighties TV show Dynasty.
Collins released her new autobiography, Behind the Shoulder Pads: Tales I Tell My Friends, in September. It describes her relationship with her novelist sister Jackie, as well as encounters with Hollywood greats, British royals—and the 29-year-old Styles.
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In the book, the Dynasty icon recalls how the former One Direction frontman blocked her view of Cher’s performance at the gala in May 2019 and ignored her cries for him to move.
Collins was attending fashion’s biggest night out for the first time, she wrote, but she didn’t get to see much when Cher sang her hit “Believe” in front of an enthusiastic audience of celebrities.
“The sophisticated crowd went mad for her, standing up whooping and cheering,” Collins wrote.
“Bette Midler, wearing a top hat and tailcoat in glittery black sequins, came to our table and boogied with Julianne Moore, and I glimpsed Gwyneth Paltrow and Katie Holmes doing the same.”
Cher briefly left the stage for an outfit change, “then came back wearing her original Bob Mackie-style sleek black embroidered bodysuit and a massive black curly wig to sing ‘Believe,’ Collins continued.
“Harry Styles jumped on the table in front of us, obscuring our view, and took no notice of our entreaties to ‘Get down, we can’t see.'”
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Newsweek has reached out to Harry Styles’ representatives for comment.
Despite her disappointment, Collins wrote that she thoroughly enjoyed the gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had camp as its theme.
“I loved my first Met Ball, and I would certainly go again in a heartbeat—although at $30,000 a seat, I’ll wait to be invited,” she wrote.
In Behind the Shoulder Pads, Collins also opens up about having an abortion in her mid-twenties when she was engaged to Warren Beatty. The experience was “vivid” and “painful,” she wrote, but she felt she had no other option.
Her studio would have dropped her, “my acting career would be over and I would spend the rest of my life raising and supporting a child I was not ready for—at that time.”
She added that she had “screamed in rage at the TV” when she heard about the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, describing the decision as “a gross affront to all females.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.