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In the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming female actor. She grew into a familiar star on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a questionable history. Her character had a romance with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, extending into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

The Highlight of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of greatness occurred on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, cheeky yet charming journey set the stage for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a uplifting, funny, bright story with a wonderful part for a older actress, tackling the topic of female sexuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the emerging discussion about women's health and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins taking on the lead role of a her career in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the star of London’s West End and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the smash-hit movie adaptation. This largely followed the comparable transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with life in her forties in a tedious, uninspired country with monotonous, predictable individuals. So when she gets the opportunity at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she grabs it with both hands and – to the surprise of the unexciting English traveler she’s gone with – stays on once it’s finished to live the genuine culture beyond the tourist compound, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the roguish local, the character Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s thinking. It earned loud laughter in cinemas all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she says to us: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

Following the film, the actress continued to have a lively work on the stage and on television, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was not as supported by the cinema where there didn’t seem to be a author in the caliber of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in filmmaker Roland Joffé's passable located in Kolkata story, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's film about gender, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the class-divided environment in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and syrupy silver-years entertainments about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (though a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic alluded to by the film's name.

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable period of glory.