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During the 1970s, Pauline Collins rose as a clever, witty, and appealingly charming performer. She grew into a recognisable figure on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was the character Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a questionable history. Her character had a relationship 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, which carried on into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

The Highlight of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of her career came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing journey paved the way for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, sunshine-y comedy with a wonderful character for a mature female lead, addressing the theme of female sexuality that was not governed by conventional views about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the emerging discussion about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

Originating on Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins performing the lead role of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an getaway midlife comedy.

She turned into the toast of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then triumphantly selected in the highly successful cinematic rendition. This closely followed the alike transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley Valentine

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is tired with life in her forties in a tedious, lacking creativity nation with uninteresting, unimaginative individuals. So when she wins the opportunity at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the surprise of the dull British holidaymaker she’s gone with – remains once it’s ended to experience the genuine culture beyond the tourist compound, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the roguish resident, the character Costas, played with an striking facial hair and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing the heroine is always breaking the fourth wall to inform us what she’s thinking. It got big laughs in theaters all over the United Kingdom when Costas tells her that he adores her body marks and she comments to us: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on TV, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's decent set in Calcutta film, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs environment in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and overly sentimental older-age stories about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar French-set film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Comedy

Director Woody Allen offered her a genuine humorous part (though a small one) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady fortune teller hinted at by the movie's title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a extraordinary moment in the sun.