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During the 1970s, this gifted performer emerged as a smart, humorous, and youthfully attractive performer. She developed into a recognisable star on both sides of the sea thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She played the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, continuing into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of her success arrived on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming adventure opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, bright comedy with a excellent character for a older actress, broaching the topic of women's desires that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley anticipated the emerging discussion about women's health and females refusing to accept to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins performing the main character of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unanticipatedly erotic everywoman heroine of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of the West End and the Broadway stage and was then successfully chosen in the highly successful cinematic rendition. This largely followed the alike stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

Her character Shirley is a practical scouse housewife who is tired with existence in her middle age in a boring, unimaginative place with uninteresting, dull folk. So when she gets the opportunity at a no-cost trip in Greece, she takes it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the dull English traveler she’s traveled with – continues once it’s ended to experience the real thing beyond the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the mischievous local, Costas, acted with an striking facial hair and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing the heroine is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s pondering. It earned huge chuckles in theaters all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she comments to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

Following the film, the actress continued to have a active career on the stage and on TV, including appearances on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as supported by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the class of Willy Russell who could give her a true main character.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's passable set in Calcutta drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and cloying elderly films about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor set in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Humor

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 title.

However, in cinema, Shirley Valentine gave her a remarkable time to shine.