Jackie Collins

Died: September 19, 2015

Jackie Collins, who has died of cancer aged 77, was one of the world's best-selling novelists, if not one of its most highly acclaimed. She sold around 500 million books, putting her behind JK Rowling, but ahead of Stephen King, John Grisham and JRR Tolkien. And she was ahead of the lot of them when it came to sex.

Collins' so-called bonkbusters gave readers a hedonistic mix of sex, high living, more sex and other sensual pleasures. The public lapped it up. The critics were less sure. Fellow author Barbara Cartland branded Collins' 1968 debut novel The World is Full of Married Men "nasty, filthy and disgusting". It was banned in Australia, but so were most things at that time.

Collins never troubled the Booker judges, but she did impact more on popular culture than most awards candidates. She was hardly the classic feminist, but claimed to be a feminist in her own way. She thought there were too many "soft, wimpy women" in literature. "Women didn't write about sex then," she said. "They wrote about women going off to the Cotswolds to have a nervous breakdown over a man."

Her heroines knew what they wanted and went out and took it. In many ways they behaved just like a typical male literary protagonist, which to some was a good thing, and for others not so good.

One of her biggest fans was her elder sister Joan Collins, who was a celebrity long before Jackie got her first book published. Joan, who was four years her senior, was a product of the Rank charm school and had been a star of British films since the early 1950s, though her career was in decline by the time Jackie became a best-selling author.

Joan had reason to be a fan beyond family loyalty. Jackie's second novel The Stud came out in 1969. It chronicled the sexual adventures of Fontaine Khaled, the bored London-based wife of a wealthy Arab businessman. She runs her own nightclub, where the manager is expected to serve her in bed, and not just toast and coffee.

Joan persuaded Jackie to let her try to get a film off the ground, with herself in the starring role. Joan was 44 when the film came out in 1978 and she "shocked" the Great British public by taking her clothes off in the service of her art. The film cost around $600,000 and was a huge hit internationally, grossing around $20 million.

The sequel The Bitch appeared in print and in cinemas in 1979. The two films revived Joan's career – though the two sisters fell out more than once over the years when Jackie went public with her views on Joan's choice of men.

And although dismissed by many as "soft porn", The Stud and The Bitch forced Hollywood and possibly sections of the public to reconsider their perceptions of women, in terms of age, attitude, attractiveness and sexuality.

After moving to Los Angeles Jackie Collins reached her commercial zenith in 1983 with Hollywood Wives, drawing on her immediate environment. She said she would make notes at parties, but had to tone some of the stories down. A television mini-series provided employment for Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson and Stephanie Powers, who might all have thought their best days were behind them.

She wrote 32 novels, several of which featured recurring heroines, including Fontaine Khaled, Lucky Santangelo, daughter of a mobster, and Madison Castelli. She wrote them long-hand, writing seven hours a day, often seven days a week, sometimes listening to Lionel Ritchie as she did so. All were best-sellers and this year the Sunday Times Rich List put her personal fortune at £65 million.

She was born Jacqueline Jill Collins in Hampstead, London, in 1937, the middle child of a theatrical agent. She went to a private school, but was expelled at 15 for smoking. Her sister was already a star and she later claimed that she met Marlon Brando at a Hollywood party and began a brief affair with him when she was still 15 and he was in his late twenties.

Jackie shared her sister's dark good looks and followed her into acting. She appeared in a string of largely forgotten films in the second half of the 1950s and made guest appearances on the classic television series Danger Man in 1961 and The Saint in 1963. She also worked as a singer and appeared as a support act on a tour with the Scottish star Lonnie Donegan in the late 1950s.

A first brief marriage ended in divorce in the early 1960s. She married for a second time in 1966, to Oscar Lerman, one of the founders of London's Tramp nightclub. He encouraged her to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, influenced, she said, by Dickens and F Scott Fitzgerald. By the end of the decade she had embarked on her third career in the arts, with immediate and much greater success.

She may not have been a great writer, but she knew her market and she was good at what she did, including selling both her books and herself. One interviewer who went to see her at her home in Beverly Hills was met with a warm "How nice to see you again." They had indeed met before, eight years previously, at a book launch, for what the writer estimated was two and a half minutes.

Eight of her books were adapted for film or television. She either wrote or co-wrote some of the scripts herself. As well as adaptations, she also wrote the original screenplay for Yesterday's Hero, a 1979 film, with Ian McShane as a football superstar, who has been seduced by the playboy lifestyle, but is attempting a comeback with a team called Leicester Forest.

The story was unoriginal – George Best did it better. The movie creaked, the dialogue clunked and the knowledge of both English football and English geography was woeful – though there is a Leicester Forest East motorway service station. Somehow it was fun anyway, a good bad movie, fondly remembered by football fans.

Collins's second husband Oscar Lerman died of cancer in 1992. In 1994 she became engaged to businessman Frank Calcagnini, but he died of a brain tumour in 1998. Collins was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago, but kept her illness a secret. She reportedly told her sister just a fortnight ago.

She is survived by three daughters from her two marriages, as well as her sister Joan.

BRIAN PENDREIGH