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In the 70s, Pauline Collins appeared as a intelligent, humorous, and appealingly charming female actor. She developed into a recognisable figure on either side of the ocean thanks to the smash hit English program Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the handsome driver Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that the public loved, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas and Sarah and No Honestly.

The Peak of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of her career arrived on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice adventure opened the door for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright film with a excellent part for a older actress, broaching the topic of feminine sensuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about demure youth.

This iconic role anticipated the growing conversation about perimenopause and females refusing to accept to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously chosen in the smash-hit film version. This closely paralleled the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is bored with existence in her 40s in a dull, unimaginative place with uninteresting, dull people. So when she gets the possibility at a free holiday in Greece, she grabs it with both hands and – to the surprise of the dull English traveler she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s ended to live the genuine culture outside the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the roguish local, the character Costas, acted with an bold facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s feeling. It received big laughs in cinemas all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he loves her skin lines and she remarks to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

Following the film, the actress continued to have a vibrant career on the stage and on television, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the cinema where there appeared not to be a writer in the league of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in Roland Joffé’s passable located in Kolkata drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in the late 90s. In director Rodrigo García's transgender story, the 2011 movie the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in dismissive and syrupy silver-years stories about old people, which were unfitting for her skills, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar set in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Woody Allen offered her a true funny character (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller alluded to by the title.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous period of glory.