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During the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy performer. She developed into a recognisable celebrity on both sides of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster UK television series Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a questionable history. Her character had a connection with the handsome driver Thomas, played by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a television couple that audiences adored, continuing into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of her career occurred on the cinema as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing story paved the way for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, comical, sunshine-y story with a wonderful part for a mature female lead, tackling the topic of female sexuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine foreshadowed the emerging discussion about midlife changes and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins performing the main character of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the toast of London theater and Broadway and was then successfully cast in the blockbuster film version. This closely paralleled the similar stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a practical wife from Liverpool who is weary with daily routine in her middle age in a boring, unimaginative country with boring, dull individuals. So when she wins the chance at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she takes it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the dull British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – remains once it’s finished to encounter the real thing away from the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, acted with an outrageous moustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Bold, open the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s thinking. It received loud laughter in movie houses all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she comments to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a lively career on the stage and on television, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the film industry where there appeared not to be a writer in the league of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's passable located in Kolkata film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a manner, to the servant-and-master setting in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in dismissive and cloying elderly entertainments about seniors, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Comedy

Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant alluded to by the film's name.

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