Shelly Long - Hollywood star of the nineties

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Shelly Long is an American actress best known for her roles in comedy series. Diane Chambers is considered her most successful image. This is the heroine of the television series "Merry Company". For this role, Shelley received five Emmy awards and two Golden Globe awards. She also played in other popular comedies. In 2009, Long appeared on the TV series Modern Family. There she played the ex-wife of Jay Pritchett. Recently, the actress has ceased to actively act in films, but the public has not lost interest in her.

Early years

Shelly Long was born in 1949 in the US city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her parents were school teachers. Mother's name was Ivadina, and father's name was Leland. Before becoming a teacher, he worked in a factory. While still at school, Shelley achieved success in public speaking. At the university, she specialized in drama theory, but then sometimes left this occupation for the modeling business. Photo by Shelley Longappeared in many prestigious magazines. She also tried to start her own business in Chicago.

First roles

In 1975, Shelley Long joined the comedy troupe Second City. She became one of the producers of a local TV program. National channels soon noticed her talent. Later, the actress began to appear in various popular comedy shows as a guest star, as well as appear in commercials. Her first significant work was participation in the film "Cracker Factory" in 1979, where she played a patient in a psychiatric clinic. Unexpected success came to her after the picture "A narrow circle of friends" about the riots at Harvard University in the 60s of the twentieth century. In 1981, she got the role of Tala in the comedy The Caveman. In 1982, she was invited to play Belinda in Ron Howard's Night Shift. A year later, the actress starred with Tom Cruise in Losing It.

Shelly Long Filmography

Many awards to our heroine brought the series "Merry Company", namely the role of Diana Chambers. Shelley Long starred in this comedy from 1982 to 1987. But participating in the filming of the series, the actress continued to work in various films. Some of them brought her even greater fame. For example, for the film Irreconcilable Differences, she received the Golden Globe. In other tapes, the actress starred with Tom Hanks, Bette Midler and Peter Coyote ("Breakthrough", "Mad Money"). In 1987, for unknown reasons (the assumptions were savored in every possible way in the press, but Shelleyrefuted) she left the Merry Company, but in 1993 she returned to the series again.

At this time, she starred in several more films. In The Company of Beverly Hills, she played a housewife who is trying to mend her relationship with her daughter and recover from her divorce. This was followed by "Frozen Assets", "Don't Tell Her It's Me". Critics highly appreciated her performance as a woman suffering from schizophrenia, in which it seems like twenty different people live (“Voices Within. The Life of Trudy Chase”). She perfectly played all these phantasmagoric personalities. After that, a career as a dramatic actress opened up before Shelley Long, which she successfully took advantage of in the late nineties.

Recent movies and personal life

One of the hits of the comedic heroine was the role of Carol in the film about the Brady family, which she played in 1995. The picture withstood two sequels, and Shelley participated in both. In 2000, she starred opposite Richard Gere in the film Dr. T and His Women. The actress was married twice, but not too successfully. The first marriage, from which she had a son, ended in divorce in 1979. Soon she met her second husband - Bruce Tyson. He was a broker and owner of securities. They got married in 1981. And in 1985 their daughter Juliana was born. But since 2000 something has gone wrong. In 2003, Bruce and Shelley separated, and in 2004 they divorced.

In the same year, the actress was hospitalized due to an overdose of painkillers. Some believed that she tried to commit suicide, although Shelleyalways denied it. Since that time, she has sharply limited filming in films and devoted her life to children. Most often, she appears on screens to participate in television shows. Her last appearance in this kind of projects is a role in Modern Family. But films with Shelley Long have become a rarity. She played bit parts in several series and sometimes in television productions - "They were mixed up in the hospital", "Zombie Hamlet", "A Matter of Time". The last film where she participated was "Different Flowers", filmed in 2016.