🔗 Share this article

During the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a smart, funny, and cherubically sexy female actor. She developed into a well-known celebrity on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the hugely popular British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a shady background. Sarah had a relationship with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that audiences adored, continuing into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of greatness came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a uplifting, comical, optimistic film with a excellent part for a seasoned performer, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine anticipated the growing conversation about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Cinema

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

Collins became the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then successfully selected in the smash-hit movie adaptation. This closely followed the similar path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is weary with existence in her 40s in a tedious, unimaginative country with uninteresting, predictable individuals. So when she gets the chance at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she takes it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the boring British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – remains once it’s ended to experience the real thing beyond the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the mischievous native, Costas, played with an striking facial hair and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s feeling. It received huge chuckles in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she says to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

Following the film, the actress continued to have a vibrant work on the theater and on TV, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there appeared not to be a author in the class of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in Roland Joffé’s adequate Calcutta-set film, City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's transgender story, 2011’s the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a manner, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a downstairs maid.

However, she discovered herself frequently selected in dismissive and cloying silver-years stories 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 Small Comeback in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (though a small one) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic referenced by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable time to shine.