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In the seventies, this gifted performer rose as a clever, witty, and appealingly charming actress. She grew into a recognisable star on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the blockbuster British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a shady background. Her character had a romance with the attractive driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. This became a television couple that viewers cherished, continuing into spinoff shows like Thomas & Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

However, the pinnacle of her success came on the silver screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice adventure opened the door for future favorites like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, funny, bright story with a wonderful role for a older actress, addressing the theme of women's desires that was not governed by traditional male perspectives about demure youth.

Collins’s Shirley Valentine anticipated the new debate about women's health and women who won’t resign themselves to being overlooked.

Starting in Theater to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the main character of a an era in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unanticipatedly erotic ordinary woman lead of an fantasy comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously cast in the blockbuster film version. This closely paralleled the comparable path from play to movie of Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Story of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a down-to-earth wife from Liverpool who is tired with existence in her forties in a boring, uninspired country with monotonous, unimaginative people. So when she wins the possibility at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s finished to live the genuine culture beyond the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the mischievous native, the character Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Sassy, sharing Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to inform us what she’s feeling. It received loud laughter in theaters all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she remarks to viewers: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a lively work on the theater and on television, including parts on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the film industry where there didn’t seem to be a writer in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in director Roland Joffé's passable set in Calcutta drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the Upstairs, Downstairs environment in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and overly sentimental elderly entertainments about the aged, 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 located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Humor

Director Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (though a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic hinted at by the movie's title.

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