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During the 70s, Pauline Collins rose as a clever, humorous, and cherubically sexy female actor. She developed into a recognisable star on both sides of the ocean thanks to the smash hit English program Upstairs Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a dodgy past. Sarah had a romance with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that audiences adored, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of her career occurred on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, bright comedy with a superb character for a older actress, addressing the theme of feminine sensuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about modest young women.

This iconic role anticipated the emerging discussion about midlife changes and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Screen

It started from Collins performing the lead role of a an era in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an escapist midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the star of the West End and the Broadway stage and was then successfully selected in the highly successful cinematic rendition. This largely followed the alike stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth Liverpool homemaker who is bored with daily routine in her forties in a tedious, unimaginative place with boring, dull individuals. So when she receives the possibility at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she takes it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the unexciting English traveler she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s over to live the genuine culture outside the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the charming local, the character Costas, played with an outrageous facial hair and accent by Tom Conti.

Bold, sharing Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to tell us what she’s thinking. It got loud laughter in theaters all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he adores her body marks and she says to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a lively professional life on the theater and on television, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a author in the league of the playwright who could give her a real starring role.

She was in director Roland Joffé's passable set in Calcutta drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's film about gender, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the class-divided environment in which she played a downstairs maid.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and cloying elderly entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey set in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Director Woody Allen did give her a genuine humorous part (though a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic alluded to by the movie's title.

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