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During the 70s, this gifted performer emerged as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming female actor. She became a recognisable star on each side of the ocean thanks to the hugely popular UK television series Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a shady background. Sarah had a romance with the attractive driver Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a television couple that audiences adored, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas and Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of her career occurred on the cinema as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, mischievous but endearing journey opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright story with a excellent character for a older actress, addressing the topic of women's desires that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

This iconic role prefigured the emerging discussion about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to fading into the background.

Originating on Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins playing the main character of a an era in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an escapist middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the celebrity of London’s West End and the Broadway stage and was then triumphantly cast in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This very much mirrored the similar stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with existence in her 40s in a boring, uninspired country with monotonous, dull folk. So when she receives the chance at a no-cost trip in Greece, she takes it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the dull English traveler she’s gone with – continues once it’s finished to live the authentic life beyond the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, acted with an striking mustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s feeling. It earned big laughs in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she comments to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the theater and on TV, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a author in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in Roland Joffé’s decent set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a servant-level domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself often chosen in dismissive and cloying older-age stories about the aged, which were beneath her talents, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor set in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a genuine humorous part (although a small one) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller alluded to by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, Shirley Valentine gave her a remarkable time to shine.