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In the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming female actor. She grew into a recognisable figure on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the hugely popular British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a connection with the attractive driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of greatness occurred on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice adventure paved the way for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a buoyant, humorous, sunshine-y film with a wonderful role for a older actress, tackling the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by conventional views about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the new debate about women's health and ladies who decline to fading into the background.

From Stage to Cinema

The story began from Collins playing the lead role of a her career in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London theater and Broadway and was then triumphantly chosen in the highly successful film version. This closely mirrored the similar path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth wife from Liverpool who is weary with daily routine in her forties in a boring, unimaginative country with monotonous, unimaginative individuals. So when she gets the opportunity at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she takes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the unexciting UK tourist she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s over to experience the genuine culture outside the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the mischievous local, Costas, acted with an bold mustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s feeling. It got huge chuckles in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he adores her skin lines and she remarks to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Dr Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the class of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's passable located in Kolkata story, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, the 2011 movie the Albert Nobbs film, Collins came back, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs world in which she played a servant-level maid.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and overly sentimental elderly entertainments about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Woody Allen did give her a true funny character (although a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller hinted at by the movie's title.

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