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In the seventies, this gifted performer appeared as a clever, humorous, and appealingly charming actress. She grew into a recognisable celebrity on either side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that viewers cherished, continuing into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her career came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, humorous, bright film with a wonderful character for a seasoned performer, broaching the subject of female sexuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about modest young women.

This iconic role prefigured the growing conversation about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

From Stage to Film

It started from Collins playing the starring part of a her career in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unanticipatedly erotic ordinary woman lead of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the celebrity of London’s West End and Broadway and was then successfully chosen in the smash-hit film version. This closely mirrored the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is bored with daily routine in her 40s in a tedious, unimaginative nation with boring, dull folk. So when she gets the possibility at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she grabs it with both hands and – to the amazement of the dull British holidaymaker she’s gone with – stays on once it’s over to encounter the genuine culture away from the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the mischievous local, the character Costas, played with an bold moustache and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open the heroine is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s feeling. It earned big laughs in movie houses all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he loves her body marks and she comments to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a active professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was less well served by the movies where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's passable Calcutta-set drama, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and featured as a British missionary and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's film about gender, the film from 2011 the Albert Nobbs film, Collins went back, in a way, to the servant-and-master setting in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and syrupy elderly entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor French-set film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Director Woody Allen provided her a real comedy role (although a minor role) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy fortune teller referenced by the title.

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