Joan Collins‘ new damehood was celebrated earlier this week at the Friar’s Club in New York City, where the British actress and author opened up to uInterview about her first encounter with Princess Diana, who would have welcomed her second grandchild – named Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana –  May 2.

Joan Collins On Princess Diana

Expressing her admiration for the late mother of Prince William and Prince Harry, Collins told uInterview, “I adored Princess Diana. I thought she was the most wonderful, wonderful person. I cherished the times that I met her. She was always so sweet and kind to me.”

Recalling the night that she met Diana, Collins, who’d first shot to fame in the 50s, revealed that she had advised the younger woman on how to manage being in the spotlight.

“When I first met her it was at a charity in Palm Beach, twenty years ago, twenty five years ago,” Collins told uInterview. “There were a lot of press there and she said, ‘How do you handle it?’ She said, ‘It’s terrifying, I’m terrified of this. I don’t know what to do.’ I said, well… you know, at some it just goes with the territory. You just have to go in and bare it.”

Joan Collins On Being A Dame, Prince Charles [EXCLUSIVE]

On Monday night in Manhattan, Jerry Lewis, Alan Cumming and more turned out to honor Joan Collins for her dame appointment at the historic Friars Club. The Friars Club, a membership only meeting place founded in 1904, counts Robert De Niro, Jerry Seinfeld, Barbra Streisand and Jon Stewart among its members.

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