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In the 70s, this gifted performer rose as a clever, funny, and youthfully attractive performer. She grew into a recognisable star on either side of the sea thanks to the hugely popular English program Upstairs Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a shady background. Her character had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her career occurred on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice adventure paved the way for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, funny, sunshine-y film with a wonderful role for a older actress, broaching the theme of female sexuality that was not limited by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

This iconic role foreshadowed the emerging discussion about perimenopause and ladies who decline to fading into the background.

From Stage to Screen

It started from Collins playing the lead role of a her career in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly selected in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely followed the comparable transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

Collins’s Shirley is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is tired with life in her 40s in a dull, uninspired nation with monotonous, predictable individuals. So when she gets the opportunity at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the boring UK tourist she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s over to experience the authentic life away from the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the mischievous local, the character Costas, played with an bold facial hair and accent by Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s feeling. It earned loud laughter in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her body marks and she remarks to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a lively work on the theater and on TV, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the class of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

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

Yet she realized herself often chosen in condescending and overly sentimental silver-years entertainments about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Humor

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a true funny character (albeit a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic alluded to by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable moment in the sun.