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In the 1970s, Pauline Collins emerged as a intelligent, humorous, and appealingly charming female actor. She grew into a familiar figure on either side of the sea thanks to the blockbuster English program the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable housemaid with a questionable history. Her character had a romance with the handsome driver Thomas, portrayed by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. It was a television couple that audiences adored, continuing into spin-off series like Thomas and Sarah and No Honestly.

Her Moment of Greatness: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of greatness came on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice adventure set the stage for subsequent successes like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a buoyant, funny, sunshine-y story with a excellent role for a seasoned performer, tackling the topic of female sexuality that was not limited by traditional male perspectives about youthful innocence.

This iconic role anticipated the new debate about perimenopause and women who won’t resign themselves to fading into the background.

Originating on Stage to Film

It originated from Collins taking on the starring part of a her career in Willy Russell’s 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the desiring and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an getaway comedy about adulthood.

She was hailed as the toast of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then successfully selected in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This very much mirrored the alike stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita.

The Story of Shirley's Journey

Her character Shirley is a down-to-earth scouse housewife who is tired with existence in her middle age in a boring, unimaginative nation with boring, unimaginative people. So when she wins the chance at a no-cost trip in Greece, she seizes it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the dull British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s ended to live the real thing outside the vacation spot, which means a wonderfully romantic adventure with the charming local, the character Costas, portrayed with an outrageous moustache and speech by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always addressing the audience to inform us what she’s feeling. It received loud laughter in cinemas all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he loves her body marks and she says to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a active career on the theater and on television, including appearances on the Doctor Who series, but she was less well served by the film industry where there appeared not to be a screenwriter in the league of the playwright who could give her a true main character.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta drama, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and starred as a UK evangelist and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins went back, in a manner, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a downstairs domestic worker.

However, she discovered herself frequently selected in dismissive and syrupy older-age entertainments about the aged, which were not worthy of her, such as eldercare films like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as poor French-set film the movie The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Comedy

Director Woody Allen provided her a real comedy role (though a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant referenced by the film's name.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a tremendous moment in the sun.