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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins rose as a intelligent, humorous, and cherubically sexy actress. She developed into a familiar star on each side of the ocean thanks to the hugely popular English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a dodgy past. Sarah had a relationship with the handsome driver Thomas, played by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, extending into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of greatness arrived on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice adventure set the stage for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a uplifting, humorous, bright comedy with a wonderful role for a older actress, tackling the theme of feminine sensuality that was not limited by conventional views about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley anticipated the emerging discussion about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

Starting in Theater to Film

The story began from Collins taking on the starring part of a her career in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate ordinary woman lead of an getaway midlife comedy.

Collins became the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously cast in the highly successful movie adaptation. This closely followed the similar transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is weary with existence in her 40s in a boring, unimaginative nation with boring, predictable folk. So when she gets the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the dull British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s over to experience the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the charming local, Costas, played with an striking mustache and dialect by Tom Conti.

Sassy, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s thinking. It earned huge chuckles in theaters all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she comments to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

Following the film, the actress continued to have a vibrant professional life on the theater and on the small screen, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as supported by the cinema where there seemed not to be a writer in the league of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s decent Calcutta-set film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the film from 2011 the Albert Nobbs film, Collins came back, in a manner, to the class-divided setting in which she played a below-stairs domestic worker.

But she found herself often chosen in condescending and syrupy silver-years stories about the aged, which were not worthy of her, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar set in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Humor

Woody Allen did give her a true funny character (although a minor role) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic hinted at by the movie's title.

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