Joan Collins back in US soaps

Joan Collins is best known for role in the 1980s show Dynasty

Actress Joan Collins has been signed up to appear in the long-running US TV drama series Guiding Light.

Collins - most famous for her role as the bitchy Alexis Carrington in the glamorous US drama Dynasty - will be with the CBS soap for six months.

The British actress will play a character called Alexandra Spaulding - said to be every inch as catty as Collins' former role.

Collins' return to US TV drama is expected to be first seen in September and will be welcomed by fans of both Collins' trademark "rich bitch" persona and hit 1980s shows Dynasty and Dallas.

Joan Collins began in movies in the 1950s

Guiding Light is shot in New York and it is a daytime, not evening, show. Collins' time in the series will mark her first in a daytime drama series.

The Spaulding character first appeared in Guiding Light in the mid-1980s.

She was played by Beverlee McKinsey until she left the series in 1992. She was replaced by Marj Dusay.

Guiding Light has been running since 1952. The action centres around the wealthy Bauers.

They live in the fictional town of Springfield alongside the similarly rich Spauldings, Chamberlains and Lewises.

Collins had a number of film credits to her name long before her Dynasty role.

She made her film debut as a beauty contest entrant in 1951's Lady Godiva Rides Again.

She went to Hollywood after starring as a femme fatale in Howard Hawks' 1955 Egyptian epic Land of the Pharaohs.

Her career dipped in late the 1960s and 1970s - which ended with her starring in sexually suggestive films The Stud and The Bitch.

Dynasty revived her career and stage roles followed in the 1990s.

More recently she played a 1950s actress in the London stage production Over the Moon.