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In the 70s, this gifted performer rose as a smart, witty, and cherubically sexy female actor. She became a familiar star on each side of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a questionable history. Her character had a relationship with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that the public loved, which carried on into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness arrived on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, cheeky yet charming journey paved the way for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a buoyant, humorous, bright story with a superb role for a seasoned performer, addressing the subject of women's desires that was not limited by conventional views about demure youth.

This iconic role anticipated the emerging discussion about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to being overlooked.

Originating on Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins taking on the main character of a lifetime in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unanticipatedly erotic relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the toast of London theater and Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the highly successful film version. This closely paralleled the comparable path from play to movie of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is bored with life in her middle age in a boring, lacking creativity country with monotonous, predictable folk. So when she wins the opportunity at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the boring English traveler she’s gone with – stays on once it’s finished to live the real thing away from the tourist compound, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the charming resident, the character Costas, portrayed with an striking mustache and accent by Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s feeling. It got big laughs in cinemas all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she comments to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a lively career on the stage and on TV, including roles on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there seemed not to be a author in the caliber of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in director Roland Joffé's adequate located in Kolkata story, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and captive in wartime Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the class-divided world in which she played a below-stairs maid.

However, she discovered herself frequently selected in condescending and cloying silver-years stories about old people, which were beneath her talents, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Woody Allen did give her a genuine humorous part (albeit a small one) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant referenced by the film's name.

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