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During the 70s, Pauline Collins rose as a intelligent, funny, and cherubically sexy actress. She became a familiar star on either side of the ocean thanks to the smash hit English program Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was Sarah, a bold but fragile parlour maid with a questionable history. Sarah had a relationship with the handsome chauffeur Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, extending into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her career came on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, cheeky yet charming story opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, funny, sunshine-y film with a wonderful part for a older actress, tackling the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the emerging discussion about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to fading into the background.

Starting in Theater to Screen

It started from Collins playing the starring part of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an getaway midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the star of the West End and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This closely paralleled the comparable transition from theater to film of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is tired with daily routine in her middle age in a dull, uninspired nation with boring, predictable people. So when she receives the possibility at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the surprise of the unexciting English traveler she’s traveled with – continues once it’s ended to live the genuine culture outside the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the roguish resident, Costas, portrayed with an striking facial hair and dialect by Tom Conti.

Bold, sharing the heroine is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s pondering. It earned huge chuckles in cinemas all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she remarks to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a active work on the theater and on television, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in Roland Joffé’s adequate set in Calcutta drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a servant-level maid.

However, she discovered herself frequently selected in condescending and syrupy silver-years films about seniors, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like the film 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 Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Humor

Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (although a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic hinted at by the movie's title.

But in the movies, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable time to shine.