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In the seventies, Pauline Collins emerged as a clever, humorous, and cherubically sexy female actor. She grew into a well-known celebrity on each side of the ocean thanks to the hugely popular British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a questionable history. Her character had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, which carried on into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her career occurred on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, mischievous but endearing journey set the stage for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a uplifting, comical, bright story with a wonderful role for a seasoned performer, broaching the theme of feminine sensuality that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the growing conversation about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to fading into the background.

From Stage to Cinema

The story began from Collins playing the lead role of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an fantasy midlife comedy.

Collins became the star of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then successfully chosen in the highly successful cinematic rendition. This largely followed the comparable stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is weary with life in her 40s in a dull, uninspired country with monotonous, predictable folk. So when she wins the chance at a free holiday in Greece, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the boring British holidaymaker she’s gone with – remains once it’s finished to encounter the genuine culture away from the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the charming resident, Costas, portrayed with an outrageous moustache and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to tell us what she’s pondering. It received huge chuckles in theaters all over the United Kingdom when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she says to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the theater and on television, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the film industry where there seemed not to be a writer in the league of the playwright who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's decent located in Kolkata drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the class-divided setting in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and cloying elderly entertainments about the aged, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a true funny character (though a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant hinted at by the movie's title.

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