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In the seventies, Pauline Collins rose as a clever, humorous, and cherubically sexy performer. She developed into a recognisable star on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a questionable history. Her character had a romance with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that the public loved, continuing into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of her success occurred on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, naughty-but-nice journey paved the way for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, funny, optimistic comedy with a excellent character for a mature female lead, broaching the subject of women's desires that did not conform by conventional views about youthful innocence.

Her portrayal of Shirley anticipated the new debate about midlife changes and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Starting in Theater to Film

The story began from Collins playing the starring part of a her career in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an fantasy middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the celebrity of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly selected in the highly successful film version. This closely paralleled the alike transition from theater to film of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

Collins’s Shirley is a realistic Liverpool homemaker who is tired with existence in her 40s in a dull, unimaginative place with uninteresting, unimaginative people. So when she gets the possibility at a no-cost trip in Greece, she seizes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the boring English traveler she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s over to live the genuine culture away from the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the mischievous native, Costas, portrayed with an outrageous mustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Bold, sharing Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s pondering. It got loud laughter in theaters all over the UK when Costas tells her that he adores her skin lines and she remarks to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a lively work on the theater and on the small screen, including parts on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the movies where there appeared not to be a writer in the caliber of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

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

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

A Minor Role in Comedy

Woody Allen provided her a true funny character (albeit a small one) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic referenced by the title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a extraordinary period of glory.