{"id":166702,"date":"2025-11-06T21:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T21:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/166702\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T21:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T21:14:09","slug":"actress-pauline-collins-star-of-shirley-valentine-dies-at-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/166702\/","title":{"rendered":"Actress Pauline Collins, star of Shirley Valentine, dies at 85"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

In a statement Thursday, her family said that Collins died peacefully at her care home in north London this week, having endured Parkinson\u2019s for several years.<\/p>\n

In a long career that spanned television, 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 \u201cnational sweetheart\u201d in the U.K. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, in 2001 for services to drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cPauline was so many things to so many people, playing a variety of roles in her life,\u201d the family said. \u201cA bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Collins won plaudits in 1969 when she starred in the first series of the BBC comedy series \u201cThe Liver Birds\u201d 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 \u201cUpstairs Downstairs\u201d about the lives of an aristocratic family and their servants in London.<\/p>\n

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But it was her eponymous performance in \u201cShirley Valentine\u201d 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\u2019s West End in 1988 for which she won an Olivier Award for best actress.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe 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,\u201d her husband of 56 years and fellow actor John Alderton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut her greatest performance was as my wife and mother to our beautiful children,\u201d added Alderton, who regularly performed alongside Collins.<\/p>\n

Collins also won great acclaim for her role in 1997 film \u201cParadise Road,\u201d which tells the story of a group of women in a Japanese prisoner of war camp who defy their captors by founding an orchestra.<\/p>\n

Her final film role was alongside Dame Joan Collins in 2017\u2019s \u201cThe Time Of Their Lives,\u201d which follows a retired actress and her friend as they travel from London to France for an ex-lover\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Pauline Collins, the versatile British actress who won a cult following for her portrayal on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,435,18,117,3334,19,17,7594,95861,130,327,95862,95860,393,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-166702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-celebrity","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-joan-collins","16":"tag-john-alderton","17":"tag-london","18":"tag-movies","19":"tag-notable-deaths","20":"tag-pauline-collins","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115504826547386249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}