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In the 70s, Pauline Collins rose as a intelligent, witty, and youthfully attractive actress. She became a recognisable star on either side of the ocean thanks to the hugely popular UK television series Upstairs Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day.

Her role was Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a dodgy past. Her character had a romance with the handsome chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, acted by Collins’s actual spouse, the actor John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, continuing into follow-up programs like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

But her moment of greatness arrived on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This freeing, mischievous but endearing journey opened the door for later hits like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia!. It was a uplifting, comical, bright story with a wonderful part for a older actress, broaching the subject of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about youthful innocence.

This iconic role foreshadowed the growing conversation about midlife changes and females refusing to accept to fading into the background.

Originating on Stage to Film

The story began from Collins performing the lead role of a lifetime in Willy Russell’s stage show from 1986: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an escapist comedy about adulthood.

Collins became the star of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then successfully chosen in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the comparable stage-to-screen journey of the performer Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, the play Educating Rita.

The Narrative of Shirley's Journey

The film's protagonist is a practical Liverpool homemaker who is tired with life in her forties in a dull, unimaginative country with boring, dull people. So when she wins the opportunity at a complimentary vacation in the Mediterranean, she grabs it with both hands and – to the amazement of the dull English traveler she’s traveled with – stays on once it’s finished to live the authentic life away from the vacation spot, which means a delightfully passionate escapade with the mischievous resident, Costas, portrayed with an bold facial hair and accent by the performer Tom Conti.

Cheeky, confiding Shirley is always speaking directly to viewers to share with us what she’s thinking. It earned big laughs in cinemas all over the United Kingdom when her love interest tells her that he adores her stretch marks and she comments to viewers: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

Following the film, the actress continued to have a active professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including roles on Doctor Who, but she was not as supported by the movies where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the caliber of the playwright who could give her a genuine lead part.

She was in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate set in Calcutta story, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and POW in Japan in director Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's trans drama, the film from 2011 Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a sense, to the servant-and-master setting in which she played a below-stairs maid.

However, she discovered herself frequently selected in condescending and overly sentimental silver-years stories about old people, which were not worthy of her, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen provided her a genuine humorous part (although a small one) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady clairvoyant alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, the Shirley Valentine role gave her a tremendous period of glory.