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In the 70s, this gifted performer emerged as a smart, witty, and cherubically sexy performer. She became a well-known star on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that the public loved, extending into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of greatness occurred on the cinema as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming adventure opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, funny, bright story with a excellent role for a mature female lead, broaching the topic of female sexuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

This iconic role anticipated the new debate about women's health and females refusing to accept to fading into the background.

From Stage to Film

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 everywoman heroine of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the celebrity of London theater and Broadway and was then successfully selected in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This closely followed the alike path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a realistic scouse housewife who is tired with daily routine in her forties in a tedious, lacking creativity place with uninteresting, unimaginative folk. So when she receives the chance at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the surprise of the dull UK tourist she’s traveled with – remains once it’s finished to encounter the genuine culture beyond the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the roguish local, the character Costas, acted with an bold moustache and speech by the performer Tom Conti.

Bold, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s pondering. It received huge chuckles in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she comments to us: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a active professional life on the stage and on television, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a author in the league of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in Roland Joffé’s adequate Calcutta-set drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's transgender story, the 2011 movie the Albert Nobbs film, Collins went back, in a way, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a servant-level maid.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in condescending and overly sentimental older-age films about old people, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return 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 questionable psychic referenced by the film's name.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous period of glory.