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During the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a clever, humorous, and appealingly charming performer. She developed into a well-known star on either side of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a shady background. Sarah had a relationship with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that the public loved, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her success came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, humorous, bright film with a excellent role for a seasoned performer, tackling the theme of feminine sensuality that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine prefigured the emerging discussion about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins performing the lead role of a her career in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an escapist midlife comedy.

She turned into the toast of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously cast in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This very much followed the comparable path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a realistic scouse housewife who is tired with existence in her 40s in a boring, lacking creativity nation with boring, dull individuals. So when she receives the possibility at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the dull British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – remains once it’s finished to live the real thing away from the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the mischievous resident, Costas, acted with an bold facial hair and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s feeling. It earned big laughs in cinemas all over the UK when Costas tells her that he adores her skin lines and she says to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively work on the theater and on TV, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the cinema where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She starred in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta film, the movie 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, 2011’s the Albert Nobbs film, Collins went back, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

But she found herself often chosen in condescending and syrupy silver-years entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Comedy

Director Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (although a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic hinted at by the title.

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable period of glory.