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In the seventies, this gifted performer appeared as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming actress. She developed into a familiar celebrity on both sides of the sea thanks to the blockbuster UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a questionable history. Her character had a connection with the attractive driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that viewers cherished, which carried on into spin-off series like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her career came on the cinema as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, mischievous but endearing story paved the way for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, humorous, optimistic comedy with a wonderful part for a older actress, tackling the theme of women's desires that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the growing conversation about perimenopause and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the starring part of a lifetime in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then successfully chosen in the highly successful movie adaptation. This largely followed the comparable stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a realistic scouse housewife who is weary with daily routine in her 40s in a tedious, unimaginative nation with uninteresting, unimaginative folk. So when she gets the chance at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the dull UK tourist she’s gone with – stays on once it’s over to encounter the authentic life away from the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the charming native, the character Costas, played with an outrageous facial hair and speech by the performer Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding Shirley is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s feeling. It received huge chuckles in theaters all over the UK when Costas tells her that he appreciates her body marks and she comments to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a true main character.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's decent located in Kolkata drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the 2011 movie the Albert Nobbs film, Collins went back, in a sense, to the class-divided world in which she played a below-stairs maid.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and cloying elderly films about the aged, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Fun

Director Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady clairvoyant hinted at by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable moment in the sun.