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During the 70s, this gifted performer rose as a smart, funny, and youthfully attractive female actor. She became a familiar figure on either side of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a dodgy past. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that viewers cherished, which carried on into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and No Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of her success came on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming adventure opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, funny, optimistic comedy with a wonderful role for a seasoned performer, tackling the theme of female sexuality that was not limited by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine anticipated the growing conversation about women's health and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Starting in Theater to Film

It started from Collins taking on the starring part of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the star of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then triumphantly selected in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the similar path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is weary with life in her 40s in a boring, unimaginative place with boring, dull folk. So when she receives the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she grabs it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the boring English traveler she’s accompanied by – remains once it’s over to experience the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the roguish local, the character Costas, acted with an striking facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s pondering. It got big laughs in theaters all over the United Kingdom when Costas tells her that he adores her skin lines and she remarks to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

Following the film, the actress continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on TV, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there appeared not to be a writer in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a real starring role.

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

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

A Brief Return in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (although a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady clairvoyant referenced by the title.

But in the movies, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable time to shine.