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In the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a clever, humorous, and cherubically sexy actress. She grew into a well-known star on each side of the ocean thanks to the smash hit English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

Her role was the character Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the handsome chauffeur Thomas, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that viewers cherished, extending into spin-off series like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of greatness occurred on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, humorous, bright comedy with a superb part for a seasoned performer, addressing the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

This iconic role foreshadowed the emerging discussion about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to fading into the background.

Originating on Stage to Screen

It started from Collins taking on the main character of a an era in the writer Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an getaway middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the celebrity of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the highly successful film version. This largely mirrored the similar stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth wife from Liverpool who is bored with life in her forties in a boring, lacking creativity nation with uninteresting, dull people. So when she receives the possibility at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she grabs it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the dull UK tourist she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s ended to encounter the genuine culture outside the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the mischievous local, Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and speech by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing Shirley is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s thinking. It received loud laughter in movie houses all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she comments to us: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a active professional life on the stage and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the league of Russell who could give her a true main character.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta drama, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a UK evangelist and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's film about gender, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs world in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in condescending and cloying silver-years entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a genuine humorous part (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady fortune teller hinted at by the title.

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable time to shine.