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During the 70s, Pauline Collins emerged as a clever, funny, and cherubically sexy female actor. She grew into a well-known star on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a bold but fragile housemaid with a questionable history. Sarah had a relationship with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, extending into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of greatness occurred on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure opened the door for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, humorous, sunshine-y comedy with a excellent role for a mature female lead, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the emerging discussion about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

From Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins playing the lead role of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the star of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely paralleled the comparable transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical scouse housewife who is weary with life in her forties in a dull, unimaginative place with uninteresting, unimaginative folk. So when she wins the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the boring British holidaymaker she’s gone with – remains once it’s finished to experience the authentic life away from the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, acted with an striking mustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding the heroine is always breaking the fourth wall to inform us what she’s pondering. It got loud laughter in cinemas all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she remarks to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a lively career on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there seemed not to be a writer in the class of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s passable set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a servant-level maid.

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

A Brief Return in Humor

Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a genuine humorous part (albeit a small one) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy fortune teller alluded to by the film's name.

However, in cinema, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a extraordinary time to shine.