Her part as Fontaine Khaled in The Stud and its 1979 sequel The Bitch led her to be cast in Dynasty; for her role as Alexis Colby, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama in 1982.

In the 2000s, Collins notably appeared in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000) and the TV movie These Old Broads (2001) alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds and Shirley MacLaine.

Between films, she appeared in several plays in London including The Seventh Veil (1952), Jassy (1952), Claudia and David (1954), and The Skin of Our Teeth (1954), as well as a UK tour of The Praying Mantis (1953).In 1954, Collins was chosen by American director Howard Hawks to star as the scheming Princess Nellifer in her first international production, Land of the Pharaohs.

The lavish Warner Brothers historical epic was unsuccessful upon release but has been lauded by Martin Scorsese and French critics supporting the auteur theory for numerous elements of its physical production.

[14] Collins's sultry performance so impressed 20th Century Fox chief Darryl Zanuck that he signed the young star to a seven-year contract with the Hollywood studio.

The same year, Collins was cast in the starring role of Evelyn Nesbitt in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing with Ray Milland and Farley Granger.

[15] MGM borrowed Collins for The Opposite Sex (1956), a musical remake of The Women (1939) in which she was cast as the gold digging Crystal, the role played by Joan Crawford in the original.

She then starred as a young nun in Sea Wife (1956), top-billed over co-star Richard Burton, followed by the all-star Island in the Sun (1957), which was a major box-office success.

[18] She then starred opposite Robert Wagner in the espionage thriller Stopover Tokyo (1957), and was Gregory Peck's leading lady in the Western drama The Bravados (1958).

The Leo McCarey comedy Rally Round the Flag, Boys (1958) cast Collins as a temptress out to seduce Paul Newman away from Joanne Woodward.

Collins withdrew from the studio's production of Sons and Lovers, and requested a release from her contract, but agreed to star in one last film for Fox, top-billed again in the biblical epic Esther and the King (1960).

In Italy, Collins starred in Hard Time for Princes (1965); back in the US she played David Janssen's wife in the detective thriller Warning Shot (1967); in the UK she was the leading lady in the spy caper Subterfuge (1968); and made a cameo appearance in the comedy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969).

In the US, Collins starred opposite her husband Anthony Newley in his autobiographical musical Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

Although she had made several appearances on interview and game shows in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Collins began her television dramatic career with a guest role in The Human Jungle in 1963.

alongside Roger Moore and Tony Curtis, Fallen Angels with Susannah York, Space 1999, Orson Welles Great Mysteries, Police Woman, The Moneychangers with Kirk Douglas and Christopher Plummer, Starsky and Hutch, Tattletales, Switch, Future Cop, Ellery Queen, The Fantastic Journey, Baretta and three separate episodes of Tales of the Unexpected.

She went to Italy for the football-themed comedy L'arbitro (1974), to Spain for The Great Adventure opposite Jack Palance and returned to England for yet another horror, playing the mother of a murderous infant in I Don't Want to Be Born (1975).

After two comedies, Alfie Darling (1975) and The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones (1976), Collins returned to the US to make what she now refers to as the nadir of her film career, the giant insect science-fiction piece Empire of the Ants (1977).

In Italy she was the leading lady in the thriller Fearless (1978); in the US made the lighthearted Zero to Sixty (1978); and back in the UK appeared with Robert Mitchum in The Big Sleep.

After shooting Game for Vultures (1979) opposite Richard Harris and Sunburn (1979) with Farrah Fawcett, Collins returned to the stage for the first time in many years to play the title role in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1980) in London's West End.

The success of The Stud and The Bitch helped Collins to be cast[22] in the second season of the then-struggling soap opera Dynasty (1981–89), as Alexis Colby, the beautiful and vengeful ex-wife of oil tycoon Blake Carrington (John Forsythe).

Dynasty became an enormous worldwide phenomenon, and by 1985 the programme was the number-one show in the United States, beating out CBS rival Dallas, which ranked number two.

She made guest star appearances in The Love Boat and Faerie Tale Theatre, and co-hosted an ABC-TV special created for her, Blondes vs. Brunettes.

[29] With Dynasty at the height of its success, Collins both produced and starred in the smash hit 1986 CBS miniseries Sins,[30] and also in the same year, Monte Carlo.

[31][32] When Dynasty ended in 1989, Collins began rehearsals for her Broadway stage debut, as Amanda in a successful revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives (1990).

She has continued to tour the world with the show and its sequel Joan Collins Unscripted ever since, including appearances in New York, Las Vegas, Dubai, Sydney, and twice at the London Palladium.

[38] Famed for her double act with Leonard Rossiter in the Cinzano advertisements, in 2012 she starred in a Europe-wide commercial for Snickers chocolate bars, alongside Stephanie Beacham.

[39] She made her first (and, to date, only) venture into pantomime as Queen Rat in Dick Whittington at the Birmingham Hippodrome during the 2010 Christmas season, starring alongside Nigel Havers and Julian Clary.

From 2013 to 2017, Collins had a recurring guest role in the British sitcom Benidorm as Crystal Hennessy-Vass, the fierce CEO of the fictional Solana Hotel Group.

[41] In 2015, Collins backed the children's fairytales app GivingTales in aid of UNICEF, together with others such as Roger Moore, Ewan McGregor, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, and Michael Caine.

[44] In 2021, Collins appeared in a short comedy spoof for Comic Relief entitled 2020: The Movie, in which she played Maggie Keenan, the first person to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.