Joan Collins Reveals Shocking Details About Elizabeth Taylor’s First Husband, Nicky Hilton
Joan Collins, the glamorous star of Dynasty, recently opened up about her early days in Hollywood, where she was often compared to another screen legend — Elizabeth Taylor. Both actresses were born in London, just a year apart, and shared not only their dark hair and undeniable beauty but also a connection to the same man: Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr.
Nicky Hilton, the hotel heir, was Taylor’s first husband. Their brief, tumultuous marriage became infamous after Elizabeth revealed that he was abusive. In a new BBC documentary series, Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar, Joan, now 91, recalls her own relationship with Conrad, revealing the chaos of dating him. “He was nuts. It was quite volatile,” Joan admits in the first episode.
Once we were lying in bed, and he took out this gun from the side table and shot it to the ceiling. Nicky Hilton had a problem with being too good-looking and too rich, and I don’t think he got a lot of love from his father,” she added.
Elizabeth and Conrad married when she was just 18, but their marriage was far from a fairy tale. “I was a bit of a punching bag,” Elizabeth says in the documentary, reflecting on the abusive relationship. She admitted that her experience with Hilton forced her to grow up fast. The marriage lasted less than a year, with Elizabeth filing for divorce in 1951.
As young actresses in Hollywood, Joan and Elizabeth were often seen as rivals. Recalling that they were young teenagers at the time, she stated,. “My friends and I, we all wanted to look like her. We all did big eyebrows like her. But I know that she had a difficult time,” Despite the competition, the two would later become close friends, even sharing a group of mutual celebrity pals, including actor George Hamilton, who also appears in the documentary.
Their friendship blossomed over the years, and they starred together in the 2001 TV movie These Old Broads alongside Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds. While Elizabeth went on to marry seven more times after Conrad — most famously twice to actor Richard Burton — Joan has found lasting happiness with her fifth husband, Percy Gibson, whom she married in 2002.
Joan met Percy in 2000 while working with George Hamilton on a play produced by Percy. Despite their 32-year age gap, their bond has only grown stronger over time. In 2023, while promoting her memoir Behind the Shoulder Pads: Tales I Tell My Friends, the actress explained their secret to a happy marriage: “Separate bathrooms and the same bedroom,” she joked.
She also shared what made their relationship click from the start: “We found we had a lot in common. We like the same things. We like doing the same things.”
The BBC’s Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar brings together a variety of voices to tell Taylor’s story, featuring interviews not just with Joan and George Hamilton, but also with Sharon Stone, Kim Kardashian, Paris Jackson, and Elizabeth’s granddaughter, Naomi Wilding.
“We both adored the theater, and particularly musical theater. We love reading. We love playing cards or playing Scrabble. Neither of us are particularly outdoor people. You know, he doesn’t go running out to football games. And we love going to the theater and films and we just got along,” she added.
