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The family of actress Pauline Collins, who starred in the Liver Birds, Upstairs Downstairs and Shirley Valentine, have announced that she has died at the age of 85.

A statement to the PA news agency said: “We are heartbroken to announce that Pauline Collins died peacefully at her care home in Highgate this week, having endured Parkinson’s for several years. She was surrounded by her family.”

She starred in the first series of sitcom The Liver Birds but did not become a household name until getting a regular role in Upstairs Downstairs in 1971.

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Her role in the 1989 film Shirley Valentine , playing the lead character of the bored Liverpudlian housewife, earned her an Oscar nomination.

She had first played

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