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In the 70s, Pauline Collins appeared as a intelligent, humorous, and cherubically sexy female actor. She grew into a well-known star on each side of the ocean thanks to the smash hit English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was Sarah, a bold but fragile housemaid with a shady background. Sarah had a relationship with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This became a television couple that viewers cherished, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

The Highlight of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her success occurred on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming story set the stage for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a buoyant, funny, sunshine-y story with a wonderful part for a older actress, addressing the subject of feminine sensuality that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the emerging discussion about women's health and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Starting in Theater to Film

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an fantasy midlife comedy.

Collins became the star of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the blockbuster film version. This largely mirrored the similar path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is weary with existence in her 40s in a dull, unimaginative place with monotonous, predictable people. So when she wins the possibility at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the surprise of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s gone with – stays on once it’s finished to experience the genuine culture outside the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the charming resident, Costas, portrayed with an bold facial hair and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s feeling. It earned big laughs in cinemas all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she remarks to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Post-Valentine Work

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on TV, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the league of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in Roland Joffé’s adequate set in Calcutta film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and featured as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a way, to the class-divided environment in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in condescending and overly sentimental elderly entertainments about seniors, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Humor

Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (albeit a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant referenced by the movie's title.

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