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During the seventies, Pauline Collins emerged as a clever, humorous, and cherubically sexy actress. She grew into a well-known figure on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster UK television series Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a shady background. Her character had a connection with the handsome driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This became a television couple that audiences adored, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

The Highlight of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of her career came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, comical, bright film with a excellent part for a seasoned performer, addressing the subject of female sexuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

This iconic role anticipated the new debate about perimenopause and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Film

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a her career in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the toast of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then successfully selected in the blockbuster film version. This largely followed the alike stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with existence in her forties in a boring, lacking creativity nation with uninteresting, predictable folk. So when she wins the chance at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the dull English traveler she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s ended to encounter the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the charming local, Costas, acted with an striking facial hair and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Bold, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s thinking. It earned loud laughter in movie houses all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she comments to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the theater and on the small screen, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate Calcutta-set film, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

But she found herself often chosen in dismissive and overly sentimental elderly entertainments about the aged, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey set in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

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

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous period of glory.