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During the seventies, Pauline Collins emerged as a intelligent, funny, and youthfully attractive female actor. She developed into a well-known star on both sides of the sea thanks to the smash hit English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive parlour maid with a questionable history. Her character had a romance with the handsome driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that audiences adored, extending into spin-off series like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of greatness came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, mischievous but endearing adventure paved the way for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, humorous, bright comedy with a excellent role for a mature female lead, tackling the topic of women's desires that was not governed by conventional views about youthful innocence.

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

From Stage to Screen

The story began from Collins performing the starring part of a lifetime in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an getaway midlife comedy.

She turned into the star of London’s West End and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously cast in the highly successful movie adaptation. This closely followed the alike stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a down-to-earth Liverpool homemaker who is weary with daily routine in her middle age in a boring, unimaginative place with uninteresting, predictable people. So when she gets the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she grabs it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – continues once it’s over to experience the authentic life away from the tourist compound, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the charming native, Costas, portrayed with an striking mustache and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, open the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s pondering. It received loud laughter in movie houses all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he appreciates her stretch marks and she remarks to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively career on the theater and on TV, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the 2011 movie the Albert Nobbs film, Collins came back, in a way, to the servant-and-master setting in which she played a servant-level maid.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and overly sentimental older-age entertainments about the aged, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey French-set film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Director Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (though a minor role) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable period of glory.