‘She spread love and naughtiness’: Simon Callow on directing Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine

Her natural performance in Willy Russell’s masterpiece seemed effortless but Collins found it hugely challenging – and still made every day a party

Pauline Collins was a unique phenomenon: a superb light-comedy actress – as she described herself – who was unerringly able to reach emotional depths that reduced the stoniest-hearted of audiences to tears. She did this supremely, of course, in Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine, the one-woman play in which I directed her in the West End and on Broadway. This performance was so natural, so deftly balanced between innate cheekiness and a devastating awareness that her life was about to pass her by, that many people assumed it was effortless.

On the contrary: she found it hugely challenging. Though she knew the play was a masterpiece, the prospect of doing it filled her with dread. Rehearsals were far from easy. The play is essentially a comic monologue and calls for very particular skills not possessed by all actors. I forced the poor woman to come into rehearsal every day and tell a new joke – torture for her, second nature to Shirley. Then there was the matter of getting her to credibly cook egg and chips while telling the story of her life. I knew she had to get all of that – the jokes and the chips – into her bones before she could stand before us as a three-dimensional person telling us deep truths about her life and the lives of millions of other women, all the while preparing the evening meal. As she struggled, Willy Russell began to have doubts about having cast her. “She’ll be fine,” he said, “but she won’t be Shirley.”