Pauline Collins obituary

<p>Actor who earned an Oscar nomination for portraying Shirley Valentine, a dissatisfied housewife who sets off on a romantic quest in Greece</p><p>The actor Pauline Collins, who has died aged 85 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, had a habit of moving from one role to another but will for ever be remembered for two parts – a&nbsp;parlourmaid in the 1970s masters-and-servants TV drama Upstairs Downstairs, at the mercy&nbsp;of her employers, and a woman very much in control of her own life in Willy Russell’s stage and film comedy Shirley Valentine.</p><p>“Too much security makes me nervous, afraid of missing all the surprises just below the horizon,” she once remarked. “One of the terrors of a little success is the possibility of losing the ability to dare, to jump off the cliff.”</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/nov/07/pauline-collins-obituary">Continue reading...</a>