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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins emerged as a smart, witty, and appealingly charming actress. She developed into a familiar figure on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

Her role was the character Sarah, a bold but fragile housemaid with a dodgy past. Her character had a romance with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that audiences adored, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her career occurred on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure paved the way for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, comical, optimistic story with a superb role for a mature female lead, tackling the topic of female sexuality that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

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

Originating on Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins performing the starring part of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual everywoman heroine of an escapist middle-aged story.

She was hailed as the star of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the highly successful film version. This very much mirrored the alike stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Plot of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a practical scouse housewife who is bored with daily routine in her 40s in a dull, uninspired place with boring, unimaginative folk. So when she wins the chance at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she takes it with both hands and – to the surprise of the dull English traveler she’s gone with – stays on once it’s over to experience the authentic life beyond the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the roguish local, Costas, portrayed with an striking mustache and dialect by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s pondering. It earned loud laughter in theaters all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she says to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Subsequent Roles

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the theater and on television, including roles on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the film industry where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's passable located in Kolkata film, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and POW in Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's film about gender, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a way, to the class-divided setting in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and overly sentimental older-age stories about seniors, 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 Small Comeback in Fun

Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (though a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable fortune teller hinted at by the movie's title.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous period of glory.