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In the seventies, Pauline Collins appeared as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy female actor. She grew into a recognisable figure on each side of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit UK television series Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a dodgy past. Her character had a romance with the good-looking driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. It was a television couple that the public loved, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her career occurred on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice journey paved the way for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, humorous, sunshine-y film with a wonderful part for a seasoned performer, addressing the topic of women's desires that did not conform by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the emerging discussion about perimenopause and females refusing to accept to fading into the background.

Originating on Stage to Cinema

The story began from Collins playing the starring part of a her career in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an fantasy middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the star of London theater and Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the highly successful movie adaptation. This largely followed the alike stage-to-screen journey of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth Liverpool homemaker who is weary with existence in her forties in a tedious, uninspired place with monotonous, unimaginative folk. So when she receives the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with both hands and – to the surprise of the dull British holidaymaker she’s gone with – continues once it’s ended to experience the genuine culture beyond the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the mischievous native, the character Costas, played with an bold facial hair and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding the heroine is always breaking the fourth wall to share with us what she’s pondering. It received huge chuckles in movie houses all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she remarks to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on the small screen, including appearances on Dr Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's decent set in Calcutta film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a sense, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and syrupy older-age entertainments about the aged, which were unfitting for her skills, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor French-set film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Fun

Director Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (although a brief appearance) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant hinted at by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous moment in the sun.