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In the seventies, this gifted performer emerged as a intelligent, humorous, and cherubically sexy female actor. She developed into a familiar star on each side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a questionable history. Sarah had a relationship with the attractive driver Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a television couple that the public loved, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her success came on the cinema as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, mischievous but endearing adventure set the stage for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, funny, sunshine-y story with a excellent role for a mature female lead, broaching the subject of female sexuality that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the growing conversation about perimenopause and females refusing to accept to being overlooked.

From Stage to Screen

It started from Collins performing the main character of a lifetime in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the star of London theater and Broadway and was then successfully selected in the smash-hit movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the similar transition from theater to film of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical wife from Liverpool who is bored with daily routine in her forties in a dull, unimaginative place with boring, dull people. So when she gets the chance at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the unexciting English traveler she’s accompanied by – remains once it’s ended to experience the authentic life beyond the resort area, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the charming local, the character Costas, played with an striking moustache and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s pondering. It received big laughs in theaters all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he appreciates her body marks and she comments to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a active work on the stage and on TV, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there appeared not to be a author in the class of the playwright who could give her a real starring role.

She was in director Roland Joffé's adequate Calcutta-set film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a manner, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a below-stairs domestic worker.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in condescending and syrupy elderly stories about the aged, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor French-set film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Woody Allen offered her a genuine humorous part (although a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady fortune teller referenced by the title.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a extraordinary time to shine.