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During the 70s, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming performer. She became a recognisable star on either side of the sea thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

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

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of greatness arrived on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, mischievous but endearing story opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, funny, bright story with a excellent character for a mature female lead, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by conventional views about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the new debate about perimenopause and females refusing to accept to fading into the background.

From Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins playing the main character of a her career in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate ordinary woman lead of an fantasy middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the star of London’s West End and Broadway and was then victoriously chosen in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This very much followed the alike transition from theater to film of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is bored with existence in her 40s in a boring, lacking creativity place with uninteresting, dull folk. So when she gets the chance at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she takes it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the dull English traveler she’s gone with – continues once it’s over to experience the genuine culture away from the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the mischievous native, Costas, portrayed with an outrageous moustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Bold, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s thinking. It earned huge chuckles in theaters all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he appreciates her stretch marks and she remarks 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 theater and on television, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the class of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's decent set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a below-stairs maid.

Yet she realized herself frequently selected in condescending and syrupy elderly entertainments about the aged, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey French-set film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Humor

Woody Allen did give her a true funny character (albeit a brief appearance) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable clairvoyant alluded to by the movie's title.

Yet on film, Shirley Valentine gave her a tremendous time to shine.