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In the seventies, Pauline Collins appeared as a clever, witty, and cherubically sexy actress. She grew into a familiar star on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the smash hit British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the equivalent of Downton Abbey back then.

She played Sarah, a bold but fragile housemaid with a shady background. Sarah had a romance with the good-looking driver Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. This became a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, extending into follow-up programs like Thomas and Sarah and the show No, Honestly.

The Peak of Excellence: Shirley Valentine

Yet the highlight of greatness came on the silver screen as Shirley Valentine. This liberating, naughty-but-nice adventure paved the way for later hits like the Calendar Girls film and the Mamma Mia series. It was a cheerful, comical, sunshine-y comedy with a excellent role for a seasoned performer, broaching the topic of feminine sensuality that was not limited by usual male ideas about modest young women.

Her portrayal of Shirley foreshadowed the growing conversation about women's health and females refusing to accept to being overlooked.

From Stage to Cinema

It originated from Collins performing the main character of a her career in playwright Willy Russell's 1986 theater production: the play Shirley Valentine, the longing and unexpectedly sensual relatable female protagonist of an escapist midlife comedy.

Collins became the toast of the West End and New York's Broadway and was then victoriously selected in the smash-hit cinematic rendition. This closely followed the alike transition from theater to film of actress Julie Walters in Russell’s 1980 play, Educating Rita.

The Plot of The Film's Heroine

Collins’s Shirley is a realistic scouse housewife who is weary with life in her 40s in a tedious, uninspired place with boring, unimaginative individuals. So when she receives the chance at a complimentary vacation in the Greek islands, she takes it with enthusiasm and – to the astonishment of the boring British holidaymaker she’s accompanied by – stays on once it’s over to experience the authentic life beyond the resort area, which means a delightfully passionate adventure with the charming resident, the character Costas, played with an bold facial hair and speech by the performer Tom Conti.

Sassy, open Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to share with us what she’s feeling. It received loud laughter in cinemas all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he adores her skin lines and she comments to viewers: “Aren’t men full of shit?”

Post-Valentine Work

After Valentine, the actress continued to have a vibrant work on the stage and on TV, including parts on Dr Who, but she was not as supported by the movies where there appeared not to be a author in the league of Willy Russell who could give her a true main character.

She starred in Roland Joffé’s passable Calcutta-set film, City of Joy, in the year 1992 and played the lead as a English religious worker and captive in wartime Japan in filmmaker Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo García's film about gender, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins returned, in a sense, to the servant-and-master world in which she played a servant-level housekeeper.

But she found herself frequently selected in condescending and syrupy silver-years stories about seniors, which were beneath her talents, such as care-home dramas like Mrs Caldicot’s Cabbage War and Quartet, as well as ropey located in France film The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins.

A Minor Role in Fun

Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a true funny character (though a brief appearance) in his the film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the shady psychic referenced by the movie's title.

Yet on film, her performance as Shirley gave her a remarkable period of glory.