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During the seventies, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, funny, and appealingly charming female actor. She became a familiar star on either side of the sea thanks to the hugely popular English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the handsome driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that audiences adored, which carried on into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her success arrived on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, cheeky yet charming story opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a uplifting, funny, bright story with a wonderful part for a mature female lead, addressing the subject of female sexuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

This iconic role prefigured the emerging discussion about women's health and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

Originating on Stage to Screen

It originated from Collins playing the starring part of a her career in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London’s West End and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This very much mirrored the alike transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is tired with existence in her middle age in a tedious, unimaginative nation with boring, predictable individuals. So when she receives the opportunity at a no-cost trip in the Greek islands, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the boring UK tourist she’s gone with – continues once it’s over to experience the real thing beyond the tourist compound, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the roguish resident, Costas, portrayed with an outrageous facial hair and accent by Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s pondering. It earned huge chuckles in movie houses all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she remarks to us: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, the actress continued to have a lively professional life on the stage and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a author in the class of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's passable set in Calcutta film, City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s trans drama, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a manner, to the class-divided setting in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in dismissive and overly sentimental elderly films about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar located in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Humor

Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable clairvoyant alluded to by the title.

Yet on film, Shirley Valentine gave her a tremendous moment in the sun.