đ Share this article The Shirley Valentine Role Gave This Talented Actress a Character to Reflect Her Ability. She Seized It with Style and Delight During the 70s, Pauline Collins rose as a intelligent, funny, and youthfully attractive female actor. She grew into a recognisable figure on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the hugely popular UK television series Upstairs, Downstairs, which was the Downton Abbey of its day. She played Sarah, a bold but fragile servant with a dodgy past. Her character had a relationship with the good-looking chauffeur Thomas the chauffeur, played by Collinsâs off-screen partner, the actor John Alderton. It was a on-screen partnership that viewers cherished, extending into spinoff shows like Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly. The Highlight of Greatness: Shirley Valentine Yet the highlight of her success arrived on the big screen as Shirley Valentine. This empowering, cheeky yet charming adventure set the stage for subsequent successes like Calendar Girls and the Mamma Mia series. It was a buoyant, funny, sunshine-y comedy with a excellent character for a older actress, addressing the subject of women's desires that was not limited by usual male ideas about demure youth. Collinsâs Shirley Valentine anticipated the new debate about midlife changes and women who wonât resign themselves to invisibility. Starting in Theater to Cinema It started from Collins taking on the starring part of a her career in Willy Russellâs 1986 theater production: Shirley Valentine, the desiring and surprisingly passionate relatable female protagonist of an escapist middle-aged story. She was hailed as the toast of London theater and New York's Broadway and was then triumphantly cast in the highly successful film version. This very much paralleled the comparable stage-to-screen journey of actress Julie Walters in Russellâs 1980 theater piece, Educating Rita. The Plot of Shirley's Journey Collinsâs Shirley is a practical scouse housewife who is bored with daily routine in her forties in a dull, unimaginative country with boring, unimaginative individuals. So when she receives the possibility at a complimentary vacation in the Mediterranean, she grabs it with eagerness and â to the astonishment of the unexciting British holidaymaker sheâs gone with â remains once itâs finished to encounter the authentic life outside the tourist compound, which means a wonderfully romantic fling with the charming resident, the character Costas, portrayed with an bold mustache and accent by Tom Conti. Sassy, sharing Shirley is always breaking the fourth wall to inform us what sheâs feeling. It got big laughs in cinemas all over the Britain when Costas tells her that he appreciates her stretch marks and she remarks to viewers: âDon't men talk a lot of rubbish?â Later Career Following the film, Pauline Collins continued to have a active career on the stage and on TV, including parts on Doctor Who, but she was less well served by the cinema where there appeared not to be a author in the caliber of Willy Russell who could give her a genuine lead part. She was in Roland JoffĂ©âs decent located in Kolkata story, City of Joy, in 1992 and played the lead as a British missionary and POW in Japan in Bruce Beresfordâs Paradise Road in 1997. In director Rodrigo GarcĂa's trans drama, the 2011 movie Albert Nobbs, Collins came back, in a way, to the class-divided environment in which she played a downstairs housekeeper. But she found herself often chosen in dismissive and syrupy elderly entertainments about seniors, which were unfitting for her skills, such as nursing home stories like Mrs Caldicotâs Cabbage War and the movie Quartet, as well as poor located in France film The Time of Their Lives with actress Joan Collins. A Brief Return in Humor Filmmaker Woody Allen did give her a real comedy role (though a minor role) in his You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she played the dodgy psychic alluded to by the title. However, in cinema, Shirley Valentine gave her a extraordinary period of glory.