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In the seventies, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, funny, and appealingly charming female actor. She became a recognisable figure on either side of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a questionable history. Sarah had a romance with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that viewers cherished, continuing into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of greatness arrived on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a uplifting, comical, optimistic comedy with a superb part for a mature female lead, broaching the topic of feminine sensuality that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

This iconic role foreshadowed the growing conversation about women's health and females refusing to accept to being overlooked.

Originating on Stage to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the main character of a lifetime in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an escapist middle-aged story.

Collins became the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly selected in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This closely paralleled the alike transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a practical wife from Liverpool who is weary with daily routine in her middle age in a dull, unimaginative place with uninteresting, dull individuals. So when she gets the opportunity at a no-cost trip in Greece, she grabs it with both hands and – to the surprise of the boring English traveler she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s over to experience the genuine culture beyond the tourist compound, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the roguish local, the character Costas, played with an striking facial hair and accent by Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to tell us what she’s feeling. It got huge chuckles in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she comments to us: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the stage and on television, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate located in Kolkata film, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the class-divided setting in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in condescending and syrupy silver-years entertainments about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered 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 questionable clairvoyant referenced by the movie's title.

But in the movies, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous period of glory.