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During the 1970s, this gifted performer appeared as a smart, witty, and cherubically sexy performer. She grew into a well-known figure on both sides of the sea thanks to the blockbuster English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the period drama of its era.

She portrayed Sarah, a bold but fragile parlour maid with a dodgy past. Her character had a romance with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. This became a television couple that viewers cherished, continuing into spinoff shows like the Thomas and Sarah series and No Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

But her moment of greatness arrived on the big screen as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, mischievous but endearing journey paved the way for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, comical, optimistic film with a superb character for a mature female lead, addressing the theme of feminine sensuality that did not conform by usual male ideas about modest young women.

This iconic role foreshadowed the new debate about midlife changes and women who won’t resign themselves to invisibility.

From Stage to Screen

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 everywoman heroine of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the celebrity of London theater and Broadway and was then victoriously chosen in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the comparable stage-to-screen journey of Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, the play Educating Rita.

The Narrative of The Film's Heroine

The film's protagonist is a practical wife from Liverpool who is tired with daily routine in her middle age in a boring, uninspired country with monotonous, unimaginative individuals. So when she receives the chance at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she grabs it with eagerness and – to the amazement of the dull English traveler she’s gone with – continues once it’s over to live the real thing beyond the tourist compound, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the charming resident, the character Costas, played with an bold mustache and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Sassy, confiding Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to inform us what she’s feeling. It got loud laughter in movie houses all over the UK when Costas tells her that he appreciates her skin lines and she remarks to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Later Career

Post-Shirley, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant career on the stage and on television, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the movies where there seemed not to be a writer in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She was in Roland Joffé’s passable located in Kolkata drama, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and featured as a UK evangelist and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s trans drama, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a way, to the servant-and-master environment in which she played a servant-level maid.

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

A Minor Role in Humor

Director Woody Allen offered her a true funny character (though a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic hinted at by the film's name.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous time to shine.