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In the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a intelligent, funny, and cherubically sexy female actor. She grew into a well-known star on either side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster English program Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a bold but fragile parlour maid with a questionable history. Sarah had a connection with the good-looking driver Thomas, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This turned into a on-screen partnership that the public loved, extending into spin-off series like the Thomas and Sarah series and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her success occurred on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing adventure paved the way for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, funny, bright comedy with a excellent part for a older actress, broaching the topic of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

This iconic role foreshadowed the emerging discussion about women's health and ladies who decline to invisibility.

Originating on Stage to Screen

It started from Collins performing the main character of a an era in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the longing and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

Collins became the celebrity of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously chosen in the smash-hit film version. This closely paralleled the alike path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, the play Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley Valentine

Her character Shirley is a practical wife from Liverpool who is tired with daily routine in her middle age in a tedious, uninspired place with boring, dull people. So when she wins the opportunity at a free holiday in the Mediterranean, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the unexciting English traveler she’s gone with – continues once it’s over to live the genuine culture away from the resort area, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the charming resident, the character Costas, portrayed with an bold mustache and speech by Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to tell us what she’s feeling. It received loud laughter in movie houses all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her skin lines and she remarks to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant professional life on the theater and on TV, including parts on Dr Who, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there appeared not to be a author in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She starred in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate located in Kolkata story, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a British missionary and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresford’s the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a sense, to the class-divided setting in which she played a servant-level domestic worker.

Yet she realized herself often chosen in dismissive and overly sentimental older-age entertainments about old people, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Small Comeback in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a real comedy role (albeit a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic referenced by the title.

But in the movies, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a remarkable moment in the sun.