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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, witty, and cherubically sexy female actor. She developed into a familiar star on each side of the sea thanks to the hugely popular UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

She played the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive parlour maid with a questionable history. Her character had a connection with the handsome chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that audiences adored, continuing into spin-off series like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

The Highlight of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her career came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice adventure set the stage for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, comical, bright story with a excellent character for a mature female lead, addressing the subject of female sexuality that was not limited by conventional views about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the new debate about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a an era in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the star of the West End and Broadway and was then triumphantly selected in the smash-hit movie adaptation. This closely paralleled the similar path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley Valentine

Her character Shirley is a realistic scouse housewife who is weary with existence in her forties in a boring, uninspired nation with uninteresting, predictable people. So when she gets the chance at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she takes it with both hands and – to the surprise of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s over to encounter the authentic life outside the resort area, which means a gloriously sexy fling with the charming local, Costas, acted with an striking moustache and dialect by Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing Shirley is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s thinking. It received big laughs in cinemas all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she remarks to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a active career on the stage and on TV, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there seemed not to be a author in the class of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

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

Yet she realized herself often chosen in patronizing and overly sentimental elderly stories about seniors, which were unfitting for her skills, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

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

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