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In the 70s, this gifted performer rose as a smart, witty, and youthfully attractive performer. She developed into a familiar star on either side of the sea thanks to the hugely popular British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was the character Sarah, a bold but fragile housemaid with a shady background. Her character had a relationship with the handsome driver Thomas, played by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her success came on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, cheeky yet charming journey paved the way for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright film with a wonderful role for a older actress, broaching the theme of women's desires that was not limited by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the growing conversation about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Cinema

It started from Collins playing the starring part of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an getaway midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the toast of London theater and Broadway and was then successfully selected in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This closely paralleled the comparable transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a realistic scouse housewife who is weary with life in her middle age in a tedious, uninspired country with uninteresting, predictable individuals. So when she gets the chance at a free holiday in Greece, she grabs it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the unexciting UK tourist she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s over to experience the genuine culture outside the resort area, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the charming local, the character Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s thinking. It earned huge chuckles in cinemas all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she says to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

Following the film, the actress continued to have a active work on the stage and on TV, including parts on Dr Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the class of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s adequate set in Calcutta drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a UK evangelist and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the film from 2011 the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a manner, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and overly sentimental elderly entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Director Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller referenced by the movie's title.

Yet on film, Shirley Valentine gave her a remarkable period of glory.