🔗 Share this article

During the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy performer. She developed into a recognisable star on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that the public loved, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her career arrived on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure opened the door for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, funny, sunshine-y story with a wonderful character for a mature female lead, addressing the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

This iconic role prefigured the growing conversation about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to fading into the background.

From Stage to Cinema

The story began from Collins playing the starring part of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London theater and Broadway and was then triumphantly selected in the highly successful cinematic rendition. This very much mirrored the alike path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical wife from Liverpool who is tired with life in her 40s in a boring, uninspired country with monotonous, predictable individuals. So when she receives the chance at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with both hands and – to the surprise of the dull British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s over to live the genuine culture outside the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the mischievous local, the character Costas, portrayed with an bold moustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing Shirley is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s feeling. It got huge chuckles in movie houses all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he adores her body marks and she comments to us: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a vibrant career on the theater and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She appeared in Roland Joffé’s decent set in Calcutta film, City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a English religious worker and Japanese prisoner of war in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a sense, to the class-divided world in which she played a servant-level domestic worker.

But she found herself often chosen in condescending and syrupy silver-years stories about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Fun

Director Woody Allen provided her a true funny character (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic referenced by the film's name.

However, in cinema, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable moment in the sun.