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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins appeared as a clever, humorous, and youthfully attractive female actor. She grew into a well-known star on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the hugely popular UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that viewers cherished, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her career occurred on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, mischievous but endearing journey set the stage for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, funny, optimistic film with a excellent part for a older actress, tackling the subject of female sexuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about demure youth.

This iconic role anticipated the emerging discussion about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

From Stage to Film

It started from Collins taking on the lead role of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the toast of London’s West End and the Broadway stage and was then triumphantly chosen in the highly successful movie adaptation. This largely followed the similar path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is tired with daily routine in her 40s in a dull, uninspired place with uninteresting, unimaginative individuals. So when she receives the chance at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the dull UK tourist she’s gone with – remains once it’s over to encounter the real thing beyond the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the roguish resident, Costas, portrayed with an outrageous mustache and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s pondering. It received huge chuckles in cinemas all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her skin lines and she says to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on TV, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the cinema where there didn’t seem to be a author in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She starred in filmmaker Roland Joffé's decent Calcutta-set story, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a way, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a servant-level domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in condescending and cloying older-age entertainments about the aged, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Humor

Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a genuine humorous part (though a small one) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic alluded to by the film's name.

Yet on film, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous period of glory.