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During the 1970s, this gifted performer appeared as a clever, humorous, and youthfully attractive actress. She became a recognisable figure on either side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster UK television series Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a dodgy past. Sarah had a connection with the handsome chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. This became a television couple that viewers cherished, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of greatness occurred on the cinema as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming journey opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, funny, sunshine-y story with a excellent role for a older actress, addressing the topic of feminine sensuality that was not governed by conventional views about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley anticipated the emerging discussion about perimenopause and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a lifetime in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unanticipatedly erotic everywoman heroine of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then triumphantly selected in the blockbuster film version. This very much paralleled the comparable transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with existence in her 40s in a tedious, unimaginative place with monotonous, unimaginative people. So when she wins the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in the Mediterranean, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the boring UK tourist she’s traveled with – continues once it’s over to encounter the real thing away from the resort area, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the mischievous local, the character Costas, played with an bold mustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s pondering. It got huge chuckles in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her body 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 vibrant work on the stage and on television, including parts on Dr Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the league of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's decent Calcutta-set film, City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a manner, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in patronizing and overly sentimental elderly stories about the aged, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor located in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Director Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (albeit a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic hinted at by the movie's title.

Yet on film, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous time to shine.