The Shirley Valentine Role Provided This Talented Actress a Part to Equal Her Talent. She Seized It with Flair and Delight

During the 1970s, this gifted performer rose as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy performer. She grew into a recognisable figure on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a dodgy past. Sarah had a romance with the good-looking driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

However, the pinnacle of greatness came on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice adventure paved the way for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright film with a superb role for a seasoned performer, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that was not limited by conventional views about demure youth.

This iconic role prefigured the emerging discussion about women's health and ladies who decline to fading into the background.

From Stage to Screen

The story began from Collins taking on the main character 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.

She turned into the celebrity of London theater and Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the smash-hit movie adaptation. This largely mirrored the comparable path from play to movie of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a practical wife from Liverpool who is weary with existence in her forties in a tedious, lacking creativity country with uninteresting, unimaginative people. So when she gets the chance at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she grabs it with both hands and – to the surprise of the boring British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s ended to experience the real thing outside the resort area, which means a gloriously sexy fling with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, acted with an outrageous moustache and dialect by the performer Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s feeling. It earned loud laughter in cinemas all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her skin lines and she remarks to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as supported by the movies where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a true main character.

She starred in filmmaker Roland Joffé's decent set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s trans drama, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a downstairs maid.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and syrupy silver-years stories about old people, which were unfitting for her skills, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor set in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided 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 dodgy psychic hinted at by the title.

However, in cinema, Shirley Valentine gave her a tremendous time to shine.