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During the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a intelligent, humorous, and cherubically sexy performer. She became a familiar figure on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a questionable history. Her character had a connection with the handsome chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. It was a television couple that audiences adored, continuing into follow-up programs like the Thomas and Sarah series and No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her success arrived on the cinema as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice story opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, humorous, sunshine-y film with a excellent character for a older actress, broaching the theme of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley prefigured the emerging discussion about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the lead role of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unanticipatedly erotic ordinary woman lead of an escapist midlife comedy.

She turned into the star of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the smash-hit film version. This largely mirrored the similar path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is tired with daily routine in her middle age in a dull, lacking creativity place with boring, dull people. So when she wins the chance at a free holiday in Greece, she seizes it with both hands and – to the amazement of the unexciting UK tourist she’s accompanied by – remains once it’s over to experience the authentic life beyond the resort area, which means a gloriously sexy fling with the charming local, Costas, portrayed with an striking facial hair and dialect by Tom Conti.

Sassy, confiding Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s feeling. It received loud laughter in theaters all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her stretch marks and she says to the audience: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Post-Valentine Work

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a active career on the stage and on television, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Russell who could give her a true main character.

She was in Roland Joffé’s passable set in Calcutta story, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a UK evangelist and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, the 2011 movie the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a sense, to the Upstairs, Downstairs world in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and overly sentimental silver-years films about the aged, which were beneath her talents, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Humor

Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a brief appearance) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic hinted at by the title.

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