Pauline Collins, the British actress who was best known internationally for her Oscar-nominated role in Shirley Valentine, has died at 85.
The actress, who had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for several years, died peacefully surrounded by loved ones, according to a statement from her family.
“Pauline was so many things to so many people, playing a variety of roles in her life. A bright, sparky, witty presence on stage and screen. Her illustrious career saw her play politicians, mothers and queens,” read the statement. “She will always be remembered as the iconic, strong-willed, vivacious and wise Shirley Valentine – a role that she made all her own. We were familiar with all those parts of her because her magic was contained in each one of them.”
Collins was born on September 3, 1940, in Exmouth and trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
She broke out at home in the 1970s in her role of storied domestic Sarah Moffat in the series Upstairs, Downstairs and its spinoff Thomas & Sarah.
In 1989, she achieved international renown for her performance in Shirley Valentine, a big-screen adaptation of Willy Russell’s play for which she already had won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress.
The drama followed the fortunes of a middle-aged, working-class housewife from Liverpool who gets a new lease of life when she wins a holiday to Greece.
Collins won the Bafta for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as well as an Academy Awards nomination. Jessica Tandy won the Oscar that year for another stage-to-screen adaptation, Driving Miss Daisy
Later roles included the formidable figure of Harriet Smith in the late-’90s TV drama The Ambassador, features You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) and Quartet (2012), the latter alongside Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay and Billy Connolly, as well as last film The Time of Their Lives, a 2017 road movie in which she stared opposite Joan Collins and Franco Nero.
