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During the 1970s, Pauline Collins emerged as a intelligent, witty, and appealingly charming actress. She developed into a familiar celebrity on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the hugely popular British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a dodgy past. Sarah had a romance with the handsome driver Thomas, played by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that the public loved, continuing into spinoff shows like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her success occurred on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice journey 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 superb part for a mature female lead, broaching the theme of feminine sensuality that was not limited by conventional views about youthful innocence.

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

From Stage to Film

It originated from Collins playing the starring part of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate ordinary woman lead of an escapist middle-aged story.

She turned into the celebrity of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly selected in the blockbuster film version. This very much followed the comparable transition from theater to film of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is tired with existence in her forties in a tedious, unimaginative nation with uninteresting, unimaginative folk. So when she receives the chance at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the dull English traveler she’s accompanied by – remains once it’s over to encounter the genuine culture outside the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the charming native, Costas, played with an striking facial hair and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Bold, open the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s thinking. It got loud laughter in theaters all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she remarks to viewers: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a active career on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there seemed not to be a author in the class of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She appeared in Roland Joffé’s adequate Calcutta-set drama, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in condescending and cloying elderly entertainments about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar set in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a small one) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic alluded to by the title.

Yet on film, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous moment in the sun.