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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, funny, and appealingly charming actress. She became a well-known star on each side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive parlour maid with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s real-life husband, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that audiences adored, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness arrived on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, cheeky yet charming story set the stage for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, funny, bright film with a wonderful part for a older actress, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the new debate about women's health and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

Starting in Theater to Screen

It originated from Collins taking on the starring part of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the star of London’s West End and Broadway and was then victoriously chosen in the highly successful movie adaptation. This very much followed the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a practical wife from Liverpool who is bored with daily routine in her 40s in a boring, lacking creativity nation with uninteresting, dull individuals. So when she receives the chance at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the dull British holidaymaker she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s ended to encounter the genuine culture away from the resort area, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the charming resident, the character Costas, played with an striking facial hair and speech by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley is always addressing the audience to share with us what she’s pondering. It received big laughs in movie houses all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he loves her body marks and she comments to us: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a lively career on the stage and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the film industry where there seemed not to be a author in the league of Russell who could give her a true main character.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s adequate located in Kolkata story, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, 2011’s the Albert Nobbs film, Collins came back, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs environment in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

However, she discovered herself often chosen in condescending and overly sentimental silver-years entertainments about the aged, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Humor

Director 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 fortune teller alluded to by the movie's title.

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