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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, humorous, and appealingly charming performer. She became a recognisable celebrity on either side of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, extending into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her career occurred on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming adventure opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, comical, bright story with a wonderful role for a seasoned performer, broaching the topic of women's desires that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the new debate about midlife changes and ladies who decline to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

The story began from Collins taking on the main character of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the celebrity of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then successfully chosen in the smash-hit film version. This very much paralleled the alike stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a realistic scouse housewife who is bored with existence in her 40s in a boring, unimaginative place with monotonous, unimaginative individuals. So when she receives the opportunity at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she grabs it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – continues once it’s finished to experience the authentic life outside the tourist compound, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the mischievous native, the character Costas, played with an bold mustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Bold, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s feeling. It earned loud laughter in theaters all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her body marks and she says to viewers: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a active professional life on the stage and on television, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there seemed not to be a author in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta 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 Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's film about gender, the film from 2011 the Albert Nobbs film, Collins went back, in a way, to the class-divided world in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

Yet she realized herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and cloying silver-years entertainments about old people, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar set in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Director Woody Allen provided her a true funny character (although a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant hinted at by the title.

Yet on film, Shirley Valentine gave her a tremendous period of glory.