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During the 70s, Pauline Collins rose as a clever, witty, and youthfully attractive actress. She developed into a familiar celebrity on either side of the ocean thanks to the hugely popular English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a bold but fragile housemaid with a dodgy past. Her character had a connection with the attractive driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that the public loved, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

However, the pinnacle of her success occurred on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, comical, bright comedy with a wonderful role for a older actress, addressing the theme of female sexuality that did not conform by conventional views about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the growing conversation about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins taking on the starring part of a her career in the writer Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an escapist midlife comedy.

She turned into the star of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the smash-hit film version. This very much followed the similar transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a practical scouse housewife who is bored with existence in her middle age in a dull, uninspired place with monotonous, unimaginative individuals. So when she receives the opportunity at a free holiday in Greece, she takes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – remains once it’s ended to encounter the genuine culture away from the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the charming resident, Costas, played with an outrageous mustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, confiding the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s pondering. It received huge chuckles in theaters all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her body marks and she comments to viewers: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively work on the stage and on TV, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the class of Russell who could give her a true main character.

She was in director Roland Joffé's decent located in Kolkata film, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the class-divided setting in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in condescending and syrupy older-age stories about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Director Woody Allen did give her a genuine humorous part (although a minor role) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable clairvoyant referenced by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, Shirley Valentine gave her a extraordinary moment in the sun.