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In the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a intelligent, funny, and youthfully attractive actress. She grew into a recognisable celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

She played Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive parlour maid with a questionable history. Her character had a relationship with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that audiences adored, which carried on into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her success arrived on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure set the stage for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, bright comedy with a excellent part for a seasoned performer, tackling the subject of feminine sensuality that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley anticipated the emerging discussion about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to fading into the background.

Starting in Theater to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the lead role of a her career in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an fantasy middle-aged story.

She turned into the star of London’s West End and Broadway and was then victoriously chosen in the blockbuster film version. This largely followed the similar path from play to movie of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is tired with existence in her forties in a dull, uninspired country with boring, unimaginative individuals. So when she wins the chance at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she seizes it with both hands and – to the surprise of the boring UK tourist she’s gone with – continues once it’s ended to experience the genuine culture away from the resort area, which means a gloriously sexy fling with the charming local, Costas, played with an striking facial hair and speech by Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to tell us what she’s thinking. It got loud laughter in theaters all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she comments to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a lively professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a author in the class of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta film, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a British missionary and POW in Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a way, to the class-divided world in which she played a below-stairs maid.

Yet she realized herself repeatedly cast in condescending and syrupy elderly stories about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor set in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided 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 questionable fortune teller alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a extraordinary moment in the sun.