Dame Joan Collins broke down in front of the Loose Women panel, holding back tears as she spoke about her sister Jackie.
Jackie, who died in 2015, had ignored breast cancer warning signals, according to the 90-year-old actress.
She appeared on the Loose Women panel for a special episode of the ITV show, which included Elizabeth Hurley raising awareness for breast cancer.
Dame Joan recently recounted her own terrible abortion tale, describing it as “vivid and painful.”
When the Loose Women panellists asked her about her sister’s cancer diagnosis over a decade ago, her strength faltered somewhat.
Dame Joan held back tears as she said: ‘I lost my mother and I lost my sister Jackie, to breast cancer and several friends. I feel it’s just such a killer, but it [doesn’t have to] be, as Elizabeth [Hurley] said, if it’s checked in time.’
Jackie died at the age of 77 from breast cancer after concealing her stage-4 diagnosis for six years, without even informing her family.
The author went on Loose Women nine days before her death, despite having just notified her sister weeks previously.
Dame Joan continued: ‘I remember my sister Jackie and she said to me, it was about six weeks before she died, she said, “I’ve got stage four breast cancer”.
‘I said, “Haven’t you been having mammograms like I’ve been telling you to have, like I’ve been nagging you for the last 20 years?” She said, “No, I didn’t want to have them.”
‘I said, Jackie, “What was it?” She said, “Well, I felt this lump but I thought it would go away”.’
Her matter-of-fact manner went away as she welled up and added: ‘Even if I think about now I feel sad about it.
‘And that is what all women should know, they should have a mammogram and they should get themselves checked.’
Dame Joan said in 2020 that she had been visited by Jackie’s ‘power,’ with her lights going out on the anniversary of her death.
She said she was upset with her sister for not getting a mammogram, but she feels she did the ‘right thing’ by keeping her disease a secret.
Dame Joan added at the time: ‘She was funny, quirky, clever, she was a perfect sister.’
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV.
