My mum Joan Collins, the narcissist: Son reveals how he felt abandoned by difficult and controlling star – and why her life still seems far too dramatic
- Sacha Newly, 49, said he loves his 81-year-old actress mother in interview
- But admitted she was difficult and had a strained relationship in childhood
- Mr Newly and his sister Tara, 51, felt abandoned after being put with nanny
- Portrait painter has described early life in a yet to be published memoir
- He also revealed unusual relationship with nanny, Sue Delon, who died
By SAM CREIGHTON FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 00:59, 9 March2020 | UPDATED: 07:56, 9 March2020
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Together: Sacha Newly with his mother Joan Collins in 1999. He described her as a ‘narcissist’
As Alexis Carrington in the glossy soap opera Dynasty, she was a difficult and controlling mother.
But Dame Joan Collins’ portrayal may have been closer to life than audiences realised, according to her only son.
Sacha Newley, 49, said he loves the 81-year-old actress ‘deeper than I can process’ but added that he had a strained childhood relationship with her and described her as a ‘narcissist’ who ‘abandoned’ him and his sister Tara, 51.
The portrait painter also said: ‘Her life still seems far too dramatic. Too much is happening. She is always dealing with some disaster. As much as she says she longs for a peaceful life, I don’t think she could handle it.’
Mr Newley, whose father was Dame Joan’s second husband, the actor and singer Anthony Newley, has described his early life in a yet to be published memoir, Hollywood Child; the rights have been bought by a film producer.
‘My mother wasn’t a monster, she was a narcissist,’ he said in an interview with the Sunday Times. ‘I can’t remember her hugging me, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
‘I just wanted mummy to love me, and I wanted a connection with the mummy I found so overwhelming and so dazzling. She nourished me in a way a muse nourishes; at a distance.’
He claimed his mother handed over care of her two children to a nanny because she was ‘overwhelmed’ by being a mother, leading him to feel she had abandoned him.
Mr Newley puts his mother’s alleged coldness down to her difficult relationship with her own father. ‘It’s true to say my mother didn’t receive a great deal of affection from her father,’ he said.
‘He was a glacier. My mother didn’t get physical warmth from her father and a girl needs that.’
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With his mother and sister Tara in 1968 (left) and with Joan Collins at Heathrow Airport when he was 17 (right)
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Mother and son at Buckingham Palace in 1997 as she collected her OBE. Mr Newly has revealed they had a strained childhood relationship and he felt abandoned after she left him in the care of a nanny
He also revealed his unusual relationship with the nanny, Sue Delong, who later committed suicide after being fired from a series of jobs.
He said how he would get almost sexual gratification from her physical methods of disciplining him.
He said: ‘There was a lot of S&M. She wouldn’t just sit on me, but sit and grind me into the carpet. It was like the relationship boys might have with their older brothers, but in my case it was with a woman who was employed, so it had a different frisson about it.’
Anthony Newley speaks in 1981 on marriage to Joan Collins
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Mr Newly with his father, Anthony Newly, Joan’s second husband (left) and at his mother’s book launch (right)
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The portrait painter also revealed his unusual relationship with the nanny, Sue Delong, who later committed suicide after being fired from a series of jobs
Mr Newley said that he and his mother – who married fifth husband Percy Gibson, 49, in 2024 – are currently ‘recalibrating’ their relationship and have frequent lunches so they can talk.
He also gave his assessment of his father, who died in 1999. While describing him as a musical genius, ‘the third in the holy trinity of Sinatra and Sammy Davis’, he put his father’s comparative lack of success down to his womanising.
Asked for a comment yesterday, a spokesman for Dame Joan said she had been told by her son that the Sunday Times interview was ‘sensationalised.’
Read more: Joan Collins’ son says ‘I felt abandoned by mum the narcissist’ | Daily Mail Online