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During the 70s, this gifted performer appeared as a smart, humorous, and youthfully attractive female actor. She developed into a well-known celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive parlour maid with a questionable history. Her character had a romance with the attractive driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, John Alderton. This turned into a TV marriage that the public loved, continuing into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

The Peak of Brilliance: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of her career arrived on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, cheeky yet charming story paved the way for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, funny, bright film with a wonderful role for a seasoned performer, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that did not conform by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine anticipated the emerging discussion about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Film

The story began from Collins taking on the lead role of a her career in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual ordinary woman lead of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

She turned into the toast of London theater and the Broadway stage and was then victoriously chosen in the smash-hit film version. This largely paralleled the comparable transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is tired with existence in her middle age in a boring, unimaginative country with uninteresting, dull individuals. So when she receives the chance at a no-cost trip in Greece, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the surprise of the dull UK tourist she’s gone with – continues once it’s over to experience the authentic life outside the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy adventure with the charming resident, the character Costas, played with an outrageous mustache and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Bold, sharing the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s feeling. It got loud laughter in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he adores her body marks and she remarks to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the theater and on TV, including roles on the Doctor Who series, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a real starring role.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a British missionary and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a servant-level maid.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in condescending and overly sentimental older-age entertainments about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey 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 (though a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant referenced by the movie's title.

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