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During the 70s, Pauline Collins emerged as a intelligent, funny, and appealingly charming actress. She developed into a well-known figure on both sides of the ocean thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the good-looking driver Thomas, played by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a television couple that audiences adored, extending into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

However, the pinnacle of her success occurred on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, cheeky yet charming story set the stage for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, comical, sunshine-y film with a wonderful role for a seasoned performer, broaching the topic of female sexuality that was not governed by conventional views about demure youth.

This iconic role foreshadowed the new debate about perimenopause and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins playing the lead role of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an getaway midlife comedy.

She turned into the celebrity of London theater and Broadway and was then victoriously cast in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This largely paralleled the comparable stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with existence in her middle age in a boring, lacking creativity country with uninteresting, unimaginative people. So when she receives the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the unexciting UK tourist she’s gone with – stays on once it’s over to encounter the authentic life beyond the resort area, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the mischievous resident, the character Costas, played with an outrageous mustache and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s thinking. It got loud laughter in theaters all over the UK when Costas tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she comments to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a active work on the theater and on television, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the cinema where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the league of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She starred in filmmaker Roland Joffé's decent set in Calcutta drama, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and Japanese prisoner of war in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's transgender story, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs setting in which she played a below-stairs maid.

But she found herself often chosen in condescending and syrupy older-age films about seniors, which were not worthy of her, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a genuine humorous part (albeit a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant hinted at by the film's name.

However, in cinema, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable period of glory.