Joan Collins dated Elizabeth Taylor’s abusive first husband: “Pretty fickle.”

Joan Collins spent much of her early Hollywood career being compared to Elizabeth Taylor. The two actresses, whose ages were just over a year apart, were both beautiful and talented London-born brunettes. They also had something else in common: Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr.

The hotel heir was Taylor’s abusive first husband – the one who she said once kicked her in the stomach, causing her to miscarry her child. Collins, 91, appears in Episode 1 of the new three-part BBC documentary series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel superstarwhich takes a close look at Taylor’s relationship with Hilton.

When asked if she had ever dated Hilton herself, the former said dynasty Star replies, “I did. He was crazy. It was pretty explosive. One time when we were lying in bed, he grabbed this gun from the side table and shot it at the ceiling. Nicky Hilton had a problem with being too good – he looks too rich and I don’t think he got much love from his father.

Taylor and Hilton married in 1950 when Taylor was only 18, but their marital bliss did not last long. “I was a bit of a punching bag,” Taylor says in a voiceover in Episode 1. “And that’s when the reality of the world hit me. The reality that I wasn’t an adult and I had to grow up really fast.”

At the start of the first episode, Collins said she looked up to Taylor even though they were “teenagers at the same time.” She recalls: “My friends and I, we all wanted to look like her. We all had big eyebrows like her. But I know she had a difficult time.”

Although Collins and Taylor were rival actresses in Hollywood, they eventually became friends and shared a number of famous friends, including actor George Hamilton, who appears in the new documentary series. They also starred in the 2001 TV movie alongside Debbie Reynolds and Shirley MacLaine Those old broads.

After divorcing Hilton in 1951, Taylor married seven more times, including twice to the respected British actor Richard Burton, whom she met on the set of the 1963 flop Cleopatra. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Collins, who dated Warren Beatty in the late 1950s before he became a major film star, has been married to her fifth husband, Percy Gibson, since 2002.

Collins met Gibson, 32 years her junior, in 2000 when she and Hamilton starred together in a play produced by Gibson in San Francisco. In 2023, while promoting her memoir Behind the Shoulder Pads: Stories I Tell My FriendsCollins told PEOPLE about their connection, which she said was strengthened by “separate bathrooms and the same bedroom.”

She also talked about what made her click almost immediately. “We discovered we had a lot in common,” she said. “We like the same things.” We like doing the same things.”

“We both loved theater, especially musical theater. We love reading. We love playing cards or scrabble. None of us are particularly outdoorsy people. You know, he doesn’t run to football games. And we like going to the theater and the cinema and we just get along well.”

Next to Collins and Hamilton Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel superstar Includes interviews with Kim Kardashian, Sharon Stone, Taylor’s granddaughter Naomi Wilding, and Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson’s daughter and Taylor’s goddaughter.

Episodes 2 and 3 of Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel superstar will air on BBC on October 4th and 11th respectively.