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During the seventies, Pauline Collins emerged as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy actress. She became a recognisable celebrity on both sides of the ocean thanks to the smash hit English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was the character Sarah, a bold but fragile parlour maid with a questionable history. Sarah had a connection with the attractive driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that the public loved, continuing into spin-off series like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of greatness came on the cinema as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice journey opened the door for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright story with a superb character for a older actress, tackling the theme of women's desires that was not limited by conventional views about youthful innocence.

This iconic role anticipated the emerging discussion about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

Originating on Stage to Screen

It started from Collins playing the main character 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 getaway comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the toast of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This very much followed the comparable transition from theater to film of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

Her character Shirley is a down-to-earth Liverpool homemaker who is tired with existence in her 40s in a dull, lacking creativity country with uninteresting, predictable people. So when she receives the chance at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the boring UK tourist she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s ended to live the authentic life away from the tourist compound, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the roguish resident, Costas, portrayed with an striking facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Bold, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s thinking. It got huge chuckles in movie houses all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he loves 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 vibrant work on the stage and on television, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s passable set in Calcutta drama, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a way, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a servant-level maid.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in dismissive and overly sentimental elderly stories about the aged, which were unfitting for her skills, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor set in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Woody Allen provided her a true funny character (though a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller hinted at by the title.

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