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In the seventies, Pauline Collins rose as a clever, funny, and cherubically sexy performer. She developed into a familiar celebrity on both sides of the sea thanks to the smash hit British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a questionable history. Sarah had a romance with the handsome chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that the public loved, extending into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her success occurred on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice journey opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a uplifting, comical, bright film with a wonderful part for a seasoned performer, broaching the subject of female sexuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

This iconic role foreshadowed the growing conversation about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

From Stage to Cinema

The story began from Collins playing the main character of a lifetime in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unanticipatedly erotic relatable female protagonist of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the toast of the West End and Broadway and was then triumphantly chosen in the highly successful movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the alike stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a realistic scouse housewife who is tired with daily routine in her forties in a dull, uninspired place with uninteresting, dull people. So when she wins the chance at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she seizes it with both hands and – to the astonishment of the unexciting UK tourist she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s finished to live the genuine culture outside the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the mischievous native, Costas, played with an bold facial hair and dialect by Tom Conti.

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

Later Career

Following the film, the actress continued to have a lively work on the theater and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there appeared not to be a writer in the class of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's decent Calcutta-set drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a sense, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a below-stairs domestic worker.

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

A Small Comeback in Humor

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a real comedy role (although a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady clairvoyant referenced by the title.

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