Pauline Collins, the versatile British actress who won a cult following for her portrayal on stage and screen of Shirley Valentine, a disillusioned middle-aged housewife finding excitement in Greece, has died. She was 85.
In a statement on Thursday (local time), her family said that Collins died peacefully at her care home in north London this week, having endured Parkinson’s for several years.
In a long career that spanned TV, film and theater, Collins was adept at playing an array of roles, all of which she infused with her trademark authenticity that indisputably earned her the status of a “national sweetheart” in the UK. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in 2001 for services to drama.
“Pauline was so many things to so many people, playing a variety of roles in her life,” the family said. “A bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen.”
Born in Exmouth in southwest England in 1940, Collins was raised near Liverpool in the northwest and began her career as a teacher. After taking up acting part-time, she landed a series of roles in the 1960s.
Collins won plaudits in 1969 when she starred in the first series of the BBC comedy series The Liver Birds about the lives and loves of two young women sharing an apartment in Liverpool. She did not become a household name until 1971 when she won a regular role in the ITV drama Upstairs Downstairs about the lives of an aristocratic family and their servants in London.
But it was her eponymous performance in Shirley Valentine that won her plaudits around the world. She first played the born-and-bred Liverpudlian in a one-woman show at the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End in 1988 for which she won an Olivier Award for best actress.
After reprising the show the following year on Broadway, the play was adapted for the big screen. She earned an Academy Award nomination in 1990 for her starring performance in the movie, that required her to emote the mundanity of loneliness in a marriage to a neglectful husband and the re-animation of Shirley’s youthful aspirations as she holidayed on a Greek island with a friend. While there, she is charmed by the charismatic Costas, played by Tom Conti, and her journey of self-discovery begins.
“She will always be remembered for Shirley Valentine, not only for her Oscar nomination or the film itself, but for clean sweeping all seven awards when she portrayed her on Broadway in the stage play, in which she played every character herself,” her husband of 56 years and fellow actor John Alderton said.
“But her greatest performance was as my wife and mother to our beautiful children,” added Alderton, who regularly performed alongside Collins.
Collins also won great acclaim for her role in 1997 film Paradise Road, which tells the story of a group of women in a Japanese prisoner of war camp who defy their captors by founding an orchestra.
Her final film role was alongside Dame Joan Collins in 2017’s The Time Of Their Lives, which follows a retired actress and her friend as they travel from London to France for an ex-lover’s funeral.
