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In the seventies, this gifted performer emerged as a intelligent, witty, and appealingly charming female actor. She grew into a familiar figure on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the hugely popular British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a questionable history. Her character had a connection with the handsome chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that viewers cherished, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

However, the pinnacle of her career came on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice adventure opened the door for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, funny, sunshine-y film with a superb part for a seasoned performer, broaching the theme of female sexuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the growing conversation about women's health and ladies who decline to fading into the background.

Starting in Theater to Film

The story began from Collins performing the main character of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an escapist middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the star of London theater and Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the alike transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is weary with daily routine in her forties in a boring, uninspired place with boring, predictable individuals. So when she wins the possibility at a free holiday in Greece, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the surprise of the dull British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – continues once it’s over to encounter the genuine culture beyond the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy fling with the charming local, the character Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Bold, open the heroine is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s thinking. It received huge chuckles in theaters all over the UK when Costas tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she remarks to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on television, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there seemed not to be a writer in the league of Russell who could give her a true main character.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's passable Calcutta-set drama, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a British missionary and POW in Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a servant-level domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself often chosen in patronizing and cloying elderly stories about seniors, 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 movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (albeit a small one) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant referenced by the film's name.

But in the movies, Shirley Valentine gave her a tremendous period of glory.