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During the 70s, Pauline Collins appeared as a smart, humorous, and appealingly charming actress. She grew into a recognisable celebrity on either side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster UK television series Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that the public loved, continuing into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of her success came on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, cheeky yet charming journey opened the door for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, funny, optimistic story with a excellent character for a seasoned performer, addressing the theme of female sexuality that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the growing conversation about perimenopause and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Starting in Theater to Cinema

It started from Collins playing the starring part of a an era in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the celebrity of the West End and Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely paralleled the similar stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical scouse housewife who is weary with life in her middle age in a tedious, uninspired nation with monotonous, dull people. So when she receives the chance at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she takes it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the dull UK tourist she’s accompanied by – continues once it’s ended to live the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic escapade with the charming native, the character Costas, acted with an bold mustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s feeling. It got big laughs in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he adores her skin lines and she says to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Post-Valentine Work

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on television, including appearances on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a true main character.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's decent Calcutta-set drama, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs environment in which she played a downstairs housekeeper.

But she found herself frequently selected in patronizing and syrupy older-age stories about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as subpar set in France film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Humor

Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (although a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic alluded to by the film's name.

Yet on film, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable time to shine.