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In the seventies, Pauline Collins appeared as a clever, witty, and appealingly charming female actor. She developed into a well-known celebrity on both sides of the sea thanks to the hugely popular English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a shady background. Her character had a connection with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, continuing into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

However, the pinnacle of her success came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice journey paved the way for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a buoyant, comical, bright film with a wonderful character for a mature female lead, tackling the theme of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine anticipated the new debate about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to fading into the background.

From Stage to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the main character of a her career in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the celebrity of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly chosen in the smash-hit movie adaptation. This largely mirrored the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a down-to-earth Liverpool homemaker who is weary with daily routine in her 40s in a tedious, uninspired country with monotonous, unimaginative folk. So when she wins the possibility at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the surprise of the boring British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – continues once it’s over to live the genuine culture away from the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the roguish native, Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and accent by Tom Conti.

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

Later Career

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a active work on the stage and on television, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there appeared not to be a writer in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in Roland Joffé’s decent set in Calcutta drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and syrupy 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 subpar set in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Humor

Woody Allen did give her a true funny character (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable clairvoyant referenced by the title.

Yet on film, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable time to shine.