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In the 1970s, this gifted performer appeared as a clever, funny, and appealingly charming actress. She became a well-known star on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

She portrayed the character Sarah, a pert-yet-vulnerable servant with a questionable history. Sarah had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. It was a television couple that audiences adored, which carried on into spinoff shows like Thomas and Sarah and No Honestly.

The Highlight of Brilliance: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of her success arrived on the cinema as the character Shirley Valentine. This liberating, cheeky yet charming adventure paved the way for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a cheerful, humorous, bright story with a excellent role for a older actress, addressing the subject of feminine sensuality that was not limited by usual male ideas about demure youth.

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

Starting in Theater to Cinema

The story began from Collins playing the starring part of a lifetime in playwright Willy Russell's stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an fantasy midlife comedy.

She turned into the toast of London theater and Broadway and was then victoriously cast in the highly successful movie adaptation. This largely followed the similar path from play to movie of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s stage work from 1980, Educating Rita.

The Narrative of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a realistic wife from Liverpool who is bored with existence in her middle age in a dull, lacking creativity place with monotonous, predictable individuals. So when she wins the opportunity at a free holiday in the Greek islands, she grabs it with enthusiasm and – to the amazement of the boring English traveler she’s gone with – stays on once it’s finished to experience the authentic life beyond the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate fling with the roguish local, Costas, played with an striking facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s feeling. It earned huge chuckles in cinemas all over the UK when her love interest tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she says to us: “Don't men talk a lot of rubbish?”

Later Career

After Valentine, Pauline Collins continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on television, including roles on Dr Who, but she was not as fortunate by the movies where there didn’t seem to be a screenwriter in the class of Willy Russell who could give her a true main character.

She starred in director Roland Joffé's adequate located in Kolkata story, the movie City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in director Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in 1997. In Rodrigo García’s film about gender, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the class-divided setting in which she played a below-stairs maid.

Yet she realized herself repeatedly cast in condescending and cloying elderly entertainments about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor French-set film The Time of Their Lives with the performer Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Comedy

Director Woody Allen offered her a real comedy role (albeit a small one) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy clairvoyant hinted at by the movie's title.

Yet on film, Shirley Valentine gave her a remarkable time to shine.