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In the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming female actor. She developed into a familiar celebrity on both sides of the sea thanks to the hugely popular UK television series Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a connection with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that audiences adored, which carried on into spinoff shows like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her career came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, cheeky yet charming journey paved the way for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, humorous, bright comedy with a wonderful part for a mature female lead, broaching the topic of feminine sensuality that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the new debate about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Screen

The story began from Collins playing the main character of a lifetime in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unanticipatedly erotic everywoman heroine of an getaway midlife comedy.

Collins became the celebrity of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the highly successful cinematic rendition. This largely followed the comparable path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a down-to-earth wife from Liverpool who is weary with daily routine in her forties in a dull, uninspired place with monotonous, dull folk. So when she gets the possibility at a free holiday in Greece, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the boring UK tourist she’s traveled with – continues once it’s ended to encounter the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, portrayed with an bold facial hair and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley 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 appreciates her skin lines and she remarks to us: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

Following the film, the actress continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on TV, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there seemed not to be a author in the class of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in Roland Joffé’s adequate set in Calcutta story, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the servant-and-master setting in which she played a servant-level maid.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and cloying elderly entertainments about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey 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 true funny character (albeit a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable clairvoyant hinted at by the title.

However, in cinema, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a extraordinary time to shine.