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In the 70s, this gifted performer rose as a intelligent, witty, and appealingly charming performer. She developed into a recognisable celebrity on each side of the sea thanks to the hugely popular English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She played Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a dodgy past. Her character had a romance with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that viewers cherished, which carried on into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of her career came on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, humorous, optimistic comedy with a wonderful character for a seasoned performer, addressing the theme of female sexuality that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the growing conversation about perimenopause and ladies who decline to invisibility.

From Stage to Screen

It started from Collins taking on the main character of a her career in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

Collins became the star of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This closely followed the alike transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a practical wife from Liverpool who is tired with life in her 40s in a dull, uninspired country with uninteresting, unimaginative folk. So when she wins the possibility at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the boring British holidaymaker she’s gone with – stays on once it’s ended to live the genuine culture beyond the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, acted with an outrageous moustache and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s feeling. It got huge chuckles in theaters all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he adores her body marks and she comments to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a lively professional life on the theater and on TV, including appearances on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there seemed not to be a author in the class of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's decent Calcutta-set film, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a English religious worker and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs world in which she played a below-stairs domestic worker.

But she found herself frequently selected in patronizing and cloying silver-years films about old people, which were unfitting for her skills, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Comedy

Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a brief appearance) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic hinted at by the title.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a extraordinary moment in the sun.