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During the 70s, Pauline Collins appeared as a clever, humorous, and appealingly charming female actor. She grew into a familiar figure on both sides of the ocean thanks to the blockbuster British TV show the Upstairs Downstairs series, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played Sarah, a spirited yet sensitive housemaid with a dodgy past. Sarah had a connection with the attractive chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, portrayed by Collins’s off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that audiences adored, which carried on into spin-off series like Thomas & Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

Her Moment of Excellence: The Shirley Valentine Film

Yet the highlight of greatness came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, naughty-but-nice journey set the stage for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia movies. It was a uplifting, humorous, bright comedy with a wonderful role for a mature female lead, broaching the theme of feminine sensuality that was not governed by usual male ideas about modest young women.

This iconic role anticipated the growing conversation about women's health and ladies who decline to being overlooked.

From Stage to Film

It started from Collins playing the main character of a an era in Willy Russell’s 1986 stage play: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an getaway midlife comedy.

Collins became the toast of London’s West End and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly chosen in the blockbuster movie adaptation. This closely mirrored the comparable 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 realistic wife from Liverpool who is bored with life in her forties in a dull, uninspired country with monotonous, dull folk. So when she receives the opportunity at a no-cost trip in Greece, she takes it with eagerness and – to the astonishment of the unexciting UK tourist she’s gone with – stays on once it’s finished to live the genuine culture away from the vacation spot, which means a gloriously sexy escapade with the charming local, Costas, portrayed with an outrageous mustache and accent by actor Tom Conti.

Cheeky, open the heroine is always speaking directly to viewers to tell us what she’s pondering. It received loud laughter in movie houses all over the UK when Costas tells her that he loves her stretch marks and she comments to the audience: “Men are full of nonsense, aren't they?”

Subsequent Roles

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a vibrant professional life on the stage and on the small screen, including appearances on Doctor Who, but she was not as supported by the movies where there seemed not to be a screenwriter in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a real starring role.

She appeared in filmmaker Roland Joffé's adequate located in Kolkata story, the movie City of Joy, in 1992 and starred as a British missionary and Japanese prisoner of war in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's the film Paradise Road in the late 90s. In filmmaker Rodrigo García's transgender story, the film from 2011 the Albert Nobbs film, Collins came back, in a way, to the servant-and-master setting in which she played a below-stairs housekeeper.

But she found herself frequently selected in dismissive and overly sentimental older-age films about the aged, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like the film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as subpar set in France film the movie The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins.

A Brief Return in Humor

Director Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (albeit a brief appearance) in his You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic alluded to by the title.

But in the movies, Shirley Valentine gave her a remarkable moment in the sun.