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During the 1970s, Pauline Collins rose as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy female actor. She developed into a recognisable star on either side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a questionable history. Sarah had a romance with the good-looking driver Thomas, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that the public loved, which carried on into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her career arrived on the cinema as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice journey opened the door for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright story with a excellent part for a seasoned performer, tackling the topic of women's desires that was not governed by usual male ideas about modest young women.

This iconic role anticipated the emerging discussion about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

It originated from Collins performing the lead role of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an escapist midlife comedy.

She turned into the toast of London’s West End and the Broadway stage and was then triumphantly cast in the smash-hit film version. This closely followed the alike transition from theater to film of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is weary with existence in her forties in a boring, lacking creativity country with boring, predictable folk. So when she receives the possibility at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the surprise of the boring UK tourist she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s ended to experience the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the mischievous native, Costas, played with an striking moustache and dialect by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s pondering. It earned big laughs in movie houses all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he adores her body marks and she comments to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively professional life on the stage and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the league of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She was in director Roland Joffé's adequate Calcutta-set film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In director Rodrigo García's film about gender, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs world in which she played a servant-level maid.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and syrupy silver-years entertainments about seniors, which were not worthy of her, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor French-set film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (though a brief appearance) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy fortune teller alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, Shirley Valentine gave her a tremendous period of glory.