Joan Collins had marriage competition with Taylor

Joan Collins and Dame Elizabeth Taylor competed over who could have the most husbands.

The 77-year-old actress - who was a close friend of the screen legend, who died at Cedars-Sinai hospital aged 79 yesterday (23.03.11) - has revealed her divorce from Peter Holm in 1987 prompted Elizabeth, who was married eight times to seven different men, to write a letter boasting about her own conquests.

She joked: "The last time I got a divorce, she sent me a note and she said, 'I'm still ahead by three.' I sent one back saying, 'Don't worry Liz, I'm going to catch up.'

"I actually didn't call her Liz. I always called her Elizabeth because she didn't like being called Liz. But I think people have a huge amount of respect for her. And the thing that was so amazing about her is that most women really liked her."

Joan - who is now married to theatre company manager Percy Gibson -was a fan of Elizabeth before she knew her, and she kept scrapbooks containing pictures of the 'Cleopatra' star.

During an appearance on CNN's 'Piers Morgan Tonight', she revealed: "I remember when I first saw her, everybody wanted to look like her. When I first saw her, when she did 'A Date with Judy' when she was about 15 and everybody - all my friends, all of us at school, we all wanted to look like her. We all wanted to have the big eyebrows and we all wanted to have the black hair and the beauty mark.

"She was phenomenal and I kept a scrapbook on her, which is why it was so fascinating for me a few years later in Hollywood to actually meet her at MGM in the make-up room, and she was so sweet.

"I think that's something that a lot of people didn't know about her. She liked to salty turn of phrase but then us English actresses always did do that."