Hollywood lives - Jackie Collins interview

I love it when people say – and they think they're being complimentary – 'Oh yes, your books are great trash!' And I go, 'Well, actually they're not trash, because trash, people throw away." There's flint in Jackie Collins's mellifluous voice, calling up images of an iron fist encased in a velvet glove.

Collins isn't boasting. She interacts with her readers all the time, answering comments they post on her website, via Facebook, and the good old-fashioned way, by getting out and about. This summer she even took to the road in Mariah Carey's former tour bus – the height of luxury, she assures me – to promote her latest novel, Married Lovers.

"I was in New Orleans and there were 500 people waiting. They'd tell me their stories. Some would say, 'You know, I had all your hardcover books and I lost them in Katrina.' I felt, oh my god – you're worried about losing my books when you've lost so much? I've sent so many books off to people. It's just a teeny little thing but I guess it means a lot to them."

It's easy to imagine fans pouring their hearts out to Collins. In the course of my research I watched countless clips in which she exuded effortless charm. Why, then, did I feel trepidation as I entered her suite at London's Dorchester Hotel?

Maybe it's the stern glare and flaring nostrils familiar from the famous double portrait with her big sister Joan, which appeared in Vanity Fair. Maybe it's the fact that she's a publishing phenomenon who's still at the top of her game. Since releasing her first novel, The World is Full of Married Men, in 1968, Collins has sold more than 400 million copies of her books, racking up bestseller after bestseller. She lives in elegant splendour in Los Angeles in a house she designed herself. It's so vast that it's a major expedition getting to the gym she built for her late fianc, Frank Calcagnini. "I always think, by the time I get there I'll be too tired to do anything," she jokes, adding that she'd always rather work than work out.

All this is to come, of course. If it's true that you never have a second chance to make a first impression, I'll admit right now that she had me at "Hello." She didn't make an entrance, merely materialised by my side, hand extended to shake mine, compliments flowing like nectar.

"The black hair, white shirt, black blazer – it works!" she said. I swooned a little, but parried, "Could your saying that have anything to do with the fact that you have on almost the exact same outfit?" (With much better jewellery, I hasten to add.)

Over the course of our conversation I found Collins wickedly funny and particularly adroit at staying just this side of indiscreet. What's most remarkable and, to me, admirable, is her technique of circling back to ensure frequent references to specific novels or characters in the course of answering questions about herself. It's savvy brand awareness, reminding me that however cosy our chat, we're here to do business. For the first time I understood the covenant she's made with her audience: readers are passionate about her books because she is. This is her life's calling and she's in her element.

She's wanted to be a writer since she was eight years old. "I remember my mother would take us to Roehampton swimming baths and I recall coming back one day, it was a glorious day, and I took out my father's card table and set out pencils, pens and paper. I wrote a book called These Things Called Teenagers: Americans. Then I wrote a book called These Things Called Teenagers: French. I already understood about a series! And I would cut out the illustrations for my heroine and my hero out of magazines."

Long before moving permanently to Los Angeles, some 25 years ago, Collins pined for the place. "When I was at school I used to pretend that my father was in the CIA and I was American. I was a loner and wanted to be in Hollywood. I loved it, loved movie stars, loved the whole ambience."

And her books reflect a particularly American take on the world, it's safe to say. If you have to classify them, she says, how about calling them Flash Readings? "I write relationships, not romance. They're about ordinary people leading extraordinary lives, and that's what the American dream is all about. People like to read about it."

Not to mention the element of escapism. Who doesn't have a wishlist of wild adventures they'd embark upon if, like so many of her characters, they possessed unlimited power, a killer body and great wealth?

"Yeah! It's creating a fantasy that I have observed and giving it to people to take them out of their lives. I get so many e-mails from readers saying, 'Your books got me through a hard time and they're the only way I can relax,' or, 'I've never read a book before but I love all your books.' It's been very rewarding." In more ways than one – if the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List is accurate, Collins is worth around 90 million; but she's never written for the money.

"My husband (nightclub owner Oscar Lerman] could have kept me very nicely. I think it was a passion for creating characters that I've always had. I never in a million years envisioned myself writing 26 books and being on the bestseller lists every time. It's amazing! I go out and speak to women because I think I can inspire them. I say, 'You know, I am a school dropout and 26 bestselling books later, I can tell you that you've got to do something in your life and with your life.

"All women have to have an identity. That's why there are so many miserable women who say that they're invisible when they get to middle age – because they are! They become a mother and a wife, and their husband is slaving over a hot secretary and their children are going off to have their lives, and they have nothing. You need something that's yours, that gives you an identity."

Kids leave and many husbands do, but not hers. Collins and Lerman were married for 26 years, until his death from cancer, in 1992. Sadly, history was to repeat itself some years later, when her fianc Frank Calcagnini also died of cancer, in 1998. She's since discovered she has an affinity for solitude.

"I live on my own because I like to write on my own. I've been married my whole life, or engaged, and in a million years I'd never give up the television clicker again – never! I love the freedom. I decided to come to London what, five days ago, so what do I do? Pick up the phone and book a ticket. I don't have to say, 'do you mind?', none of that crap. If I want to stay an extra week I can, I don't have to answer to anybody. If I want to buy a Ferarri while I'm here, I can."

Once I stop laughing, I sputter, "It's not everybody who can say that." She laughs. "No! It sounds like one of my heroines."

When Lerman met Collins she was at a crossroads. Her first husband, the father of her eldest daughter, was a wealthy businessman and drug addict, who killed himself after their divorce. As a young, single mother she was modelling and acting, but not exactly setting the world on fire – and was very much in the shadow of her famous older sister.

Lerman was older and American, from Philadelphia. He told her he'd moved to London because seeing her photograph left him desperate to meet her. "That's a very romantic come-on. And he proposed to me the first night we went out," she says.

"He owned the Ad Lib (nightclub] and I was going out with this guy who ran it, so I would be there every night. Oscar would be sitting there watching me. One night he said, 'You know there's a concert, Diana Ross and the Supremes, would you like to go see that?', and I said 'Yeah.' And then he said – this is so romantic; I've never written about it but I should – the concert was on a Tuesday, and he said, 'OK, Tuesday night is now mine.' Eventually he came up with another great plan, until he got the whole week."

When he asked what it was she did, exactly, Collins replied, "I'm a writer." Except she never finished anything and hadn't been published. But Collins had half of The World is Full of Married Men written – in longhand, her preferred methodology even now. After reading it, Lerman said, "You're a very talented storyteller. You have to finish this book."

Taking his encouragement to heart, she hopped on a plane to New York and holed up in the beach resort of Montauk. "Being English I loved getting a suntan, but I said 'I'm not going to allow myself to sit in the sun until I've written ten pages a day.' And that's how I finished the book. Ten pages, throw myself into the sun."

It would be easy to fill the rest of this space with anecdotes about her wonderfully romantic husband, but what I'm really curious to know is how they remained such great friends without it quenching the passion? "Role playing," she retorts. "I am a great admirer of becoming other characters. It's great to take the weekend away where you have the blonde wig and he's a soldier or whatever. It's so much fun. Not the whole time, but once in a while. I think I wrote about it in Hollywood Divorces, with Lola, my Latina. I loved Lola."

Do we suffer from overly romantic notions of marriage, then? "Yes. We all know that the great passion you have with a new lover will last maybe two years. After that you have to like that person. You can still have great sex, but not the same sex you were having, when you couldn't wait to rip someone's clothes off. It's like a meal. If you love lobster and have to eat it for two years straight, you want to have it cooked in a different way.

"People have to be realistic. Marriage changes things. Children change it completely. The mistake a lot of women make is they take the frustration they feel with their marriage and put all the love they have into their children. I know women in Hollywood who are married to very successful and powerful men. Men will find themselves a new Asian wife at some point. The wives are still looking great, but the reason that he left is that she gave all her attention to the children."

But if we're being completely realistic, isn't monogamy too much to ask of a man? Her big eyes widen further. "I think if you treat a man right, you can keep him for however long you want to!" And actually, in Collins's books, adulterers always repent the error of their ways, or pay a horrible price for their perfidy. Small wonder the late film director Louis Malle dubbed her a "raunchy moralist".

The Jackie Collins we knew very little about – by design – is the mother of Tracy, Rory and Tiffany, all of whom have blossomed into successful young women, none of whom I could put a face to. How did the best-connected woman in Hollywood manage to keep her kids off the radar?

"My daughters are my greatest achievement. They are really spectacular women. They don't want to be in the public eye and have no desire to do the photo spreads with mummy. I had no desire to put them in that position. When I was very young I was Joan Collins's little sister. They still think of me that way in England, but never in America. I never wanted my girls to have that tag: Jackie Collins's daughters. They'd never tell their friends who I was – though the friends would get a surprise eventually. I never left them alone when they were growing up, I was very hands-on. I'd meet them from school, cook for them every night. I'd go out to the nightclub at 10 o'clock, when they were asleep, and I'd get up every morning to take them to school. When they were little I'd write the books when they were napping."

This hands-on approach might, she admits, be her way of overcompensating for being a wild child. She was thrown out of school for smoking, had a few dangerous liaisons, and was generally mischievous, though she quite enjoys keeping most of the details shrouded in mystery. When I pester her to write her autobiography, she says, "Maybe, maybe. I'm not sure how much I could go into my juvenile delinquent years. I don't know if I want my kids to read it, though I have managed to lead a very private life, too, so I think people would be interested."

Um yeah, just a bit. In our short time together she's alluded to a close encounter of the mobster kind when she was new to LA, and has mentioned close friendships with people such as Michael and Shakira Caine, Sidney and Joanna Poitier, and Paul O'Grady. ("He came to LA as Lily Savage and we got thrown out of Harry Winston's on Rodeo Drive. Silly me, ruining my reputation – in I come with this 8ft tall drag queen. Paul's so much better looking as a man.")

Unlike Lily Savage, Collins exudes glamour, despite being simply dressed. It occurs to me that apart from her stellar cleavage, the world hasn't a clue about her figure. Does she have nice legs, for example?

"They're quite good, actually. I remember Katharine Hepburn saying, 'I have ten pairs of black pants, ten turtle-neck sweaters,' and I follow that, because then I don't have to be running around thinking about clothes all the time. I can just change my jewellery. I've developed a look that pleases me. I have it custom made and I'm very comfortable. I don't give a shit about fashion."

Maybe not, but just out of curiosity, if I managed to get past her security, would she look this impeccable when she's home alone? "No. I would be wearing gym shoes and a T-shirt, black pants and probably a black shirt and I'd have my hair on top of my head – but I would have make-up on. And sunglasses."

How rock'n'roll, wearing shades indoors.

"Not inside, but when I came out to let you in. After you'd jumped over my security fence," she says, with a grin.

She really is good at this role playing game.

• Married Lovers is published by Simon & Schuster, priced 17.99. IEW