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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Peter Bradshaw

Shirley Valentine gave Pauline Collins a role to match her talent. She seized it with style and glee

‘A gloriously sexy escapade ‘ …  Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine.
‘A gloriously sexy escapade ‘ … Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine. Photograph: PARAMOUNT/Allstar

Pauline Collins was the smart, funny, cherubically sexy female actor in the 1970s who became a recognisable star on both sides of the Atlantic in the smash hit British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played Sarah, the pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a dodgy past, who has a relationship with the handsome chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that the public loved and which carried on into spinoff shows Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

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