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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins appeared as a intelligent, witty, and cherubically sexy female actor. She became a well-known figure on either side of the ocean thanks to the hugely popular English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

Her role was the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, which carried on into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Greatness: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of her success came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, cheeky yet charming journey opened the door for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia!. It was a cheerful, humorous, sunshine-y film with a superb part for a seasoned performer, broaching the subject of women's desires that did not conform by usual male ideas about modest young women.

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

From Stage to Screen

It started from Collins performing the lead role of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 stage play: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an getaway midlife comedy.

She was hailed as the celebrity of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This closely mirrored the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley Valentine

The film's protagonist is a practical wife from Liverpool who is tired with existence in her 40s in a dull, uninspired country with boring, dull individuals. So when she wins the chance at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she takes it with eagerness and – to the surprise of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s finished to live the genuine culture beyond the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the charming local, the character Costas, played with an bold facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, sharing the heroine is always breaking the fourth wall to inform us what she’s pondering. It earned big laughs in theaters all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she remarks to the audience: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Later Career

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a lively career 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 seemed not to be a author in the league of Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She appeared in director Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta story, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, 2011’s Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a sense, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a downstairs maid.

However, she discovered herself repeatedly cast in dismissive and syrupy older-age films about the aged, 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 the performer Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a real comedy role (although a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady fortune teller referenced by the movie's title.

However, in cinema, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous time to shine.