SCREEN goddess Dame Joan Collins will reveal stories and secrets and take questions at the Grand Opera House, York, on Tuesday.

The London-born actress and author will present her intimate one-woman show Joan Collins – Unscripted at 7.30pm, having moved it from September 19 last year when filming commitments for American Horror Story in Los Angeles forced the postponement to February 26.

“This is unfortunately out of my control, but I hope you will be able to re-book and come see me, so I can regale you with many new stories about my latest projects,” she said at the time.

In a career spanning seven decades, Dame Joan, 85, is best best known for playing Alexis Carrington in Dynasty. It was a role she was offered in 1981 for the second season of the then-struggling new American soap opera as the beautiful and vengeful ex-wife of tycoon Blake Carrington, and bolstered by her presence, the show soon rivalled Dallas in the ratings.

Dynasty is sure to feature in Unscripted’s question-and-answer session, a chance to ask the Hollywood legend questions about her life and roles. No doubt they will be wanting to ask the seemingly ageless Dame Joan about her beauty secrets too. “I know they do, which is why I’m going to be writing a book about it,” she says. “We haven’t quite got the title yet, but everyone asks me about that and we’ve decided that it’s maybe time to write a book and put all my secrets in it.”

In the meantime, Dame Joan is happy to share diet and exercise tips for looking good and feeling great at any age. “Not overeating; pushing yourself away from the table before you’ve finished all your food; getting enough sleep; getting a certain amount of exercise, not too much – I don’t believe in that ‘no pain, no gain’ thing,” she advises. “Basically, try to lead a happy life, as much as one can these days.”

Dame Joan trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, before heading for Hollywood at only 20 in the 1950s, when she rubbed shoulders with Paul Newman, Warren Beatty and Marilyn Monroe, who gave her advice on dealing with predatory men in Tinseltown.

“Marilyn Monroe just said, ‘Beware of the wolves in Hollywood’. I said, ‘I can handle wolves because we have them in England as well’,” she recalls. “My father also gave me some good advice: he said to be strong, be resilient, be able to take rejection, because it’s very, very competitive.”

Dame Joan starred opposite Gregory Peck in the western The Bravados in 1958 and Bing Crosby in the musical comedy The Road To Hong Kong in 1962, and appeared in Hammer Horror films and the racy The Stud in the Seventies.

Then along came Dynasty, where her era-defining Eighties’ frocks, as much as Alexis Carrington’s behaviour, were such a hot topic.

Dame Joan had “a lot of say” on Alexis’s wardrobe. “At first they wanted me to be in like little cheap suits with, you know, Peter Pan collars, and I said that wasn’t at all what she was,” she says.

“This woman is an empowered and powerful woman, before it was popular to be so. I wanted a style that was very haute couture, very much in the Parisian way, and wear hats and heels.”

She designed the outfits, big shoulder pads and all, with costume-creator Nolan Miller, who had worked on Charlie’s Angels too. “I did a lot with Nolan Miller and helped because I wanted to be a designer when I was a child. I still design a lot of my clothes,” she says.

Dame Joan is playing nine dates on her February tour, when she will be assisted by her fifth husband, theatre producer Percy Gibson. What lies in store in her Unscripted show? “I think you can expect the unexpected, frankly,” she says. “It’s never the same and we do different things. Percy is on stage with me and he kind of monitors it. We tell jokes and talk to the audience and we have a lot of film and home movies and clips. Basically it’s going to be jolly good fun.”

Dame Joan, who has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, spent seven months in her “second home” of Los Angeles filming American Horror Story, as she shows no sings of retiring. Will she ever do that? “Well, no, I can’t actually. You retire, you die, it’s been proven,” she says. “I love what I do, I love acting, I love writing, I love travelling, I love my family, I love my friends. I have a very good outlook on life, darling.”

Joan Collins - Unscripted, Grand Opera House, York, February 26, 7.30pm. Tickets update: still available at £39.75 upwards on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york.