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During the 1970s, this gifted performer rose as a smart, humorous, and cherubically sexy female actor. She became a recognisable star on either side of the ocean thanks to the smash hit UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a questionable history. Her character had a relationship with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This became a television couple that viewers cherished, extending into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and the show No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of greatness occurred on the cinema as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice adventure opened the door for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, funny, bright comedy with a excellent part for a older actress, addressing the theme of feminine sensuality that was not governed by conventional views about demure youth.

This iconic role prefigured the growing conversation about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to being overlooked.

Starting in Theater to Cinema

It started from Collins performing the main character of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate ordinary woman lead of an escapist midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the toast of the West End and Broadway and was then victoriously cast in the blockbuster film version. This very much mirrored the comparable transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with daily routine in her middle age in a boring, unimaginative place with uninteresting, dull individuals. So when she gets the possibility at a complimentary vacation in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the boring UK tourist she’s gone with – remains once it’s ended to encounter the authentic life outside the resort area, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the mischievous local, Costas, portrayed with an bold mustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s feeling. It got huge chuckles in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he loves her body marks and she remarks to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively work on the theater and on TV, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's decent set in Calcutta film, City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a way, to the class-divided environment in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in patronizing and syrupy older-age stories about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a true funny character (although a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller hinted at by the title.

Yet on film, Shirley Valentine gave her a extraordinary moment in the sun.