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In the seventies, this gifted performer emerged as a smart, funny, and cherubically sexy performer. She grew into a recognisable figure on both sides of the sea thanks to the hugely popular British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a shady background. Sarah had a connection with the handsome driver Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that the public loved, continuing into spinoff shows like Thomas and Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

However, the pinnacle of her career came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, mischievous but endearing journey opened the door for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a buoyant, humorous, bright story with a superb role for a seasoned performer, addressing the topic of female sexuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the growing conversation about women's health and ladies who decline to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

It started from Collins performing the lead role of a her career in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She turned into the toast of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then successfully cast in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This very much paralleled the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is weary with life in her forties in a dull, uninspired place with uninteresting, unimaginative people. So when she receives the possibility at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the boring English traveler she’s traveled with – continues once it’s over to live the real thing beyond the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the roguish local, the character Costas, acted with an striking facial hair and dialect by the performer Tom Conti.

Bold, sharing Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s thinking. It got big laughs in cinemas all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her body marks and she comments to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a active professional life on the theater and on television, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a author in the class of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

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

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and cloying silver-years films about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (albeit a minor role) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable moment in the sun.