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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins rose as a smart, witty, and youthfully attractive female actor. She became a familiar figure on each side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster UK television series the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

Her role was Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the handsome chauffeur Thomas, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, which carried on into follow-up programs like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness came on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice journey opened the door for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, optimistic film with a superb character for a seasoned performer, addressing the theme of female sexuality that was not limited by conventional views about demure youth.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the new debate about midlife changes and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Screen

The story began from Collins taking on the main character of a lifetime in the writer Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the yearning and unanticipatedly erotic ordinary woman lead of an escapist midlife comedy.

Collins became the toast of London’s West End and Broadway and was then successfully chosen in the highly successful movie adaptation. This largely followed the similar transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a practical wife from Liverpool who is tired with existence in her forties in a dull, uninspired place with monotonous, unimaginative folk. So when she gets the chance at a no-cost trip in the Mediterranean, she seizes it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the dull English traveler she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s finished to live the authentic life beyond the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the roguish native, Costas, acted with an bold facial hair and speech by actor Tom Conti.

Sassy, confiding the heroine is always addressing the audience to tell us what she’s feeling. It earned huge chuckles in movie houses all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she says to viewers: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was not as fortunate by the film industry where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of Russell who could give her a true main character.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and POW in Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a manner, to the class-divided setting in which she played a servant-level domestic worker.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and syrupy elderly films about seniors, which were unfitting for her skills, such as eldercare films like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor French-set film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Humor

Director Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (although a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic referenced by the film's name.

However, in cinema, Shirley Valentine gave her a remarkable time to shine.