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In the 70s, Pauline Collins emerged as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy actress. She developed into a familiar star on either side of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit UK television series Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played the character Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a questionable history. Her character had a romance with the handsome driver Thomas, acted by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This became a TV marriage that viewers cherished, extending into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly.

The Highlight of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice journey opened the door for future favorites like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, sunshine-y comedy with a wonderful character for a seasoned performer, addressing the topic of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

This iconic role anticipated the growing conversation about midlife changes and ladies who decline to fading into the background.

Starting in Theater to Screen

It originated from Collins taking on the main character of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the yearning and surprisingly passionate everywoman heroine of an escapist midlife comedy.

She turned into the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly chosen in the blockbuster cinematic rendition. This very much followed the comparable stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of The Film's Heroine

Her character Shirley is a practical scouse housewife who is tired with life in her forties in a boring, unimaginative nation with boring, dull folk. So when she gets the possibility at a complimentary vacation in Greece, she takes it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the unexciting British holidaymaker she’s gone with – stays on once it’s over to live the authentic life beyond the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the mischievous local, the character Costas, played with an outrageous moustache and dialect by the performer Tom Conti.

Bold, confiding the heroine is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s feeling. It got big laughs in movie houses all over the Britain when her love interest tells her that he adores her skin lines and she remarks to us: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a active work on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Doctor 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 appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's passable set in Calcutta film, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a British missionary and POW in Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In Rodrigo García’s transgender story, 2011’s the Albert Nobbs film, Collins returned, in a sense, to the class-divided setting in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

But she found herself repeatedly cast in patronizing and syrupy elderly stories about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as ropey French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Comedy

Filmmaker Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (though a minor role) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the questionable psychic alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable time to shine.