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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins appeared as a intelligent, witty, and youthfully attractive performer. She became a recognisable celebrity on each side of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a dodgy past. Sarah had a relationship with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. It was a television couple that viewers cherished, continuing into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her career came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming adventure set the stage for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, humorous, bright film with a excellent character for a older actress, addressing the topic of feminine sensuality that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the emerging discussion about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to being overlooked.

Starting in Theater to Film

The story began from Collins playing the starring part of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an escapist middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the star of London’s West End and Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This largely followed the alike transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is weary with life in her 40s in a boring, lacking creativity nation with monotonous, predictable people. So when she wins the chance at a free holiday in Greece, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the unexciting UK tourist she’s gone with – continues once it’s ended to encounter the authentic life beyond the tourist compound, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the mischievous local, Costas, portrayed with an bold facial hair and speech by Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s pondering. It received big laughs in movie houses all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her stretch marks and she remarks to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a active work on the theater and on the small screen, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was not as supported by the cinema where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s passable set in Calcutta story, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and featured as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s trans drama, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs environment in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

But she found herself often chosen in condescending and syrupy silver-years stories about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like 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 Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Director Woody Allen offered her a genuine humorous part (albeit a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous time to shine.