Shelley
Lee Long (born August 23, 1949 in Fort Wayne, Indiana)
is an American actress. After graduating from South
Side High School in Fort Wayne, she studied drama at
Northwestern University, but left before graduating
to pursue a career in acting and modeling. In Chicago
she joined The Second City comedy troupe. Then, in 1975,
she began writing, producing, and co-hosting the popular
television program Sorting It Out. The local NBC broadcast
went on to win three Emmy Awards for Best Entertainment
Show.
Her first notable role came in 1980 with A Small Circle
of Friends, opposite Brad Davis and Karen Allen. The
film about social unrest at Harvard University during
the 1960s was a critical success, though it remained
relatively obscure. In 1981, she played the eye candy
in the prehistoric Ringo Starr vehicle Caveman, opposite
Dennis Quaid. She was also featured in the Henry Winkler
comedy Night Shift about life working the night shift
at a city morgue and she starred with Tom Cruise in
the 1983 comedy film Losin' It.
In 1979, while pursuing her acting
career, Long met securities broker Bruce Tyson, whom
she married in October of 1981. She gave birth to
her daughter, Juliana, on March 27, 1985.
The breakthrough Long desperately
needed happened when she was cast as vain barmaid,
Diane Chambers in Cheers. Though innovative, the show
was slow to capture an audience, but it eventually
became one of the most popular shows on television.
She was nominated for an Emmy four years in a row
and for three Golden Globes for the NBC sitcom, winning
one Emmy and two Golden Globes . The series was also
nominated for five Emmys and Golden Globes for Best
Comedy series, winning 2 Emmys, during her five year
tenure on the show. Thereafter, she became a sought-after
comedic talent.
1984 brought a rare opportunity for
Long to stretch her acting muscle, in the melancholy
comedy-drama Irreconcilable Differences. In the story,
Long's character, Lucy Van Patten, marries her love,
played by Ryan O'Neal and has a daughter. The two,
who are in the movie business, grow apart and eventually
divorce. The film follows Lucy as she breaks down
and the separated couple's own daughter, played by
a young Drew Barrymore, files for emancipation. Shelley
Long was nominated for a Best Leading Actress Golden
Globe for her performance. The film also marked the
first major motion picture of rising star Sharon Stone.
Despite the clout gained through Cheers
and Irreconcilable Differences, many of the roles
offered to Shelley Long were pedestrian slapstick
comedies. These included The Money Pit, starring a
young Tom Hanks, the crime caper Outrageous Fortune
featuring Bette Midler and Peter Coyote, and the universally
panned Hello Again, in which Long played a woman brought
back to life several years after death.
Amid much controversy, Long abandoned
her trademark Diane Chambers role and the Cheers series
after the season wrapped in mid-1987, at the height
of the series' popularity. Her first post-Cheers project
was Troop Beverly Hills, where she played a housewife
who starts a 'Wilderness Girl' troop as a distraction
from her divorce proceedings. Despite poor reviews,
the film was amusing and moderately successful.
Though Shelley Long saw critical and
box office success during the 1980s, her career fell
off the radar throughout the 1990s. She took several
roles in forgettable films, including Don't Tell Her
It's Me and Frozen Assets, which were box office disasters.
In 1993 she returned to Cheers for its last three
episodes. Long followed with a series of mediocre
television films that weren't well received. In 1993
she starred in the short-lived sitcom Good Advice
with Treat Williams and Teri Garr, but the project
proved unsuccessful and was canceled after two seasons.
In 1995 she appeared in the campy
big-screen remake The Brady Bunch Movie, which was
a surprise hit and which breathed new life into her
career as a comedienne. The following year, she reprised
her role as Carol Brady in A Very Brady Sequel, which
saw more modest success. Unfortunately, she followed
her career revival with a series of unsuccessful television
ventures, including the television remake of Freaky
Friday and the family sitcom Kelly Kelly, which aired
for just a few episodes on the WB. More recently,
Shelley took a supporting role in the Richard Gere
vehicle, Dr. T and the Women and returned for the
third Brady installment, The Brady Bunch in the White
House.
In 2004, her personal life began to
reflect her creative life. After over 20 years of
marriage, Bruce Tyson filed for divorce. The divorce
proceedings wore down the fifty-five year old actress,
aggravating a previous back injury, for which she
was prescribed both pain pills and an analgesic patch.
On November 16, 2004, Long overdosed on prescription
pain-killers and was admitted to UCLA Hospital for
treatment, in what was an apparent suicide attempt.
While she recuperates from the debacle,
she already has a new film lined up, a television
romantic comedy titled Halloween Romance.
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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