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In the 1970s, this gifted performer appeared as a intelligent, funny, and appealingly charming female actor. She became a well-known figure on both sides of the ocean thanks to the smash hit UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, continuing into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness occurred on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice story set the stage for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a uplifting, funny, bright comedy with a wonderful part for a older actress, addressing the theme of women's desires that did not conform by usual male ideas about demure youth.

This iconic role foreshadowed the emerging discussion about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

Starting in Theater to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the starring part of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an fantasy middle-aged story.

Collins became the celebrity of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the highly successful movie adaptation. This very much mirrored the similar transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley Valentine

Her character Shirley is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is weary with life in her forties in a dull, unimaginative nation with monotonous, predictable folk. So when she gets the possibility at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she takes it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s gone with – stays on once it’s over to experience the authentic life outside the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the charming native, the character Costas, portrayed with an striking moustache and accent by Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing Shirley is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s thinking. It earned big laughs in cinemas all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she remarks to us: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

Following the film, the actress continued to have a lively professional life on the theater and on TV, including roles on Dr Who, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in Roland Joffé’s passable located in Kolkata film, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs environment in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in condescending and cloying older-age entertainments about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey set in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a true funny character (though a minor role) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady fortune teller referenced by the title.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable time to shine.