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During the 70s, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming actress. She grew into a recognisable celebrity on each side of the sea thanks to the smash hit English program Upstairs Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive parlour maid with a dodgy past. Her character had a romance with the good-looking driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, which carried on into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of greatness arrived on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, mischievous but endearing adventure opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a uplifting, comical, bright film with a superb role for a mature female lead, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley anticipated the emerging discussion about midlife changes and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins playing the starring part of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unanticipatedly erotic relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the toast of the West End and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously cast in the highly successful movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the similar path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

Her character Shirley is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is weary with life in her middle age in a dull, unimaginative place with uninteresting, unimaginative individuals. So when she wins the opportunity at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she takes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the unexciting UK tourist she’s traveled with – continues once it’s over to live the genuine culture outside the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy fling with the charming resident, Costas, portrayed with an striking moustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s feeling. It received big laughs in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she remarks to us: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Later Career

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a active career on the theater and on the small screen, including parts on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there appeared not to be a author in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s decent Calcutta-set story, City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a sense, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

But she found herself often chosen in patronizing and overly sentimental silver-years films about seniors, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas 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 Comedy

Director Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (although a small one) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic referenced by the title.

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