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In the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a smart, humorous, and youthfully attractive performer. She grew 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.

Her role was Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a television couple that the public loved, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness arrived on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure paved the way for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a uplifting, humorous, bright comedy with a wonderful character for a older actress, tackling the topic of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

This iconic role foreshadowed the growing conversation about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

Starting in Theater to Film

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unanticipatedly erotic relatable female protagonist of an escapist middle-aged story.

She turned into the celebrity of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly chosen in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This largely paralleled the similar path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a down-to-earth wife from Liverpool who is bored with daily routine in her middle age in a dull, lacking creativity nation with monotonous, unimaginative people. So when she gets the opportunity at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she grabs it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the unexciting English traveler she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s ended to encounter the real thing outside the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the roguish native, the character Costas, acted with an striking facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Sassy, confiding the heroine is always breaking the fourth wall to inform us what she’s thinking. It earned huge chuckles in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he adores her skin lines and she says to viewers: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively work on the stage and on television, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there appeared not to be a writer in the league of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s adequate set in Calcutta film, City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a British missionary and POW in Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In director Rodrigo García's film about gender, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the class-divided world in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

Yet she realized herself often chosen in condescending and overly sentimental elderly entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey French-set film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Humor

Woody Allen offered her a true funny character (though a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable clairvoyant alluded to by the movie's title.

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