 Jackie Collins, whose dishy novels about the private lives of the Hollywood glitterati catapulted her to best-seller lists for decades, died Saturday in Los Angeles after a battle with breast cancer that she kept largely secret, her publicist said. She described herself as a "major juvenile delinquent" who was thrown out of a boarding school at 15 for smoking and, in the late 1950s, followed her movie star older sister, Joan, to Hollywood. Collins was married to her second husband, Oscar Lerman, for more than 25 years until his death in 1992. Collins, who wrote about characters driven by lust, power and greed, sold more than 500 millions copies of her books in 40 countries and has some 30 New York Times bestsellers, according to her own website. Some of her most successful novels included the 1983 "Hollywood Wives," about women living glamorous lives behind the scenes of the industry, and the 1985 "Lucky" and 1990 "Lady Boss" from her series focused on the ravishing and ambitious character Lucky Santangelo, who was born into an organized crime family. "It is with tremendous sadness that we announce the death of our beautiful, dynamic and one of a kind mother, Jackie Collins, who died of breast cancer today," the family said in a statement. I'm a high school dropout who eavesdrops." Collins was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer more than six years ago but only recently revealed her illness to her sister Joan, according to the People story. The British-born Collins, younger sister of actress Joan Collins, died in Los Angeles, said her spokeswoman Melody Korenbrot. Joan Collins, reacting to her sister's death, told People magazine that Jackie was her best friend. "I admire how she handled this. She was a wonderful, brave and a beautiful person and I love her," Joan Collins told the magazine.
– The family of Jackie Collins announced last night that the author of steamy novels had died at 77 of breast cancer, reports People. Collins followed actor sister Joan to Hollywood from the UK and became a star in own right, selling more than 500 million copies of her books. Maybe the height of her fame came in the 1980s with Hollywood Wives, which sold 15 million copies—while her sister was starring on Dynasty, notes AP. Her book spawned a TV miniseries of the same name. Some quotes collected from the various obituaries, including Reuters and the Los Angeles Times: "A lot of people say to me, 'Oh, I read your books under a cover with a flashlight when I was really young and I learned everything I know about sex from you.'" After the release of her first book, The World is Full of Married Men, in 1968, romance novelist "Barbara Cartland said to me, 'Oh, Miss Collins, your books are filthy and disgusting and you are responsible for all the perverts in England.' I pause for a few moments and said, 'Thank you.'" "If anything, my characters are toned down—the truth is much more bizarre." "I'm not grammatical in the way I talk, or in the way I write, and I don't pretend to be. I'm a high school dropout who eavesdrops." "I did it my way, as Frank Sinatra would say. I've written five books since the diagnosis, I've lived my life, I've traveled all over the world, I have not turned down book tours and no one has ever known until now when I feel as though I should come out with it," Collins told People in 2014 of her cancer diagnosis about five years earlier. "Now I want to save other people's lives."