Shelley Long

Biography

Shelley Lee Long (born August 23, 1949) is an American actress, singer, and comedian. For her role as Diane Chambers on the sitcom Cheers, Long received five Emmy nominations, winning in 1983 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She also won two Golden Globe Awards for the role. Long reprised her role as Diane Chambers in three episodes of the spin-off Frasier, for which she received an additional guest star Emmy nomination. From 2009 to 2018, she played the recurring role of DeDe Pritchett on the ABC comedy series Modern Family. Long has also starred in several films including Night Shift (1982), Irreconcilable Differences (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Hello Again (1987), Troop Beverly Hills (1989), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), A Very Brady Sequel (1996), and Dr. T & the Women (2000).

== Early life == Shelley Long was born on August 23, 1949, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is the only child of Ivadine (née Williams), a schoolteacher, and Leland Long, who worked in the rubber industry before becoming a teacher as well. Shelley was raised in the Presbyterian faith. She was active on her high school speech team, competing in the Indiana High School Forensic Association. In 1967, she won the National Forensic League's National Championship in Original Oratory. After graduating from South Side High School in Fort Wayne, she studied drama at Northwestern University.

== Career == In the mid-1970s, Long's break as an actress occurred when she began performing in local commercials for Homemakers furniture store in the Chicago area.

=== Early roles (1977–1982) === In Chicago, Long joined The Second City comedy troupe. In 1975, she began writing, producing, and co-hosting the television program Sorting It Out on WMAQ-TV and went on to win three Regional Emmys for her work on the show. She also appeared in the 1970s in VO5 shampoo print advertisements and in commercials for Camay soap as well as more Homemakers furniture commercials. In 1978, she appeared in a vignette on The Love Boat. Long appeared in the 1979 television film The Cracker Factory as a psychiatric inmate. In the same year she guest starred on Family and Trapper John, M.D., and played Nurse Mendenhall in an episode of M*A*S*H. In 1980, she appeared in local commercials in the Chicago area and her first feature film role in A Small Circle of Friends. The film about social unrest at Harvard University during the 1960s enjoyed a level of critical success. In 1981, she played the role of Tala in Caveman. In 1982, she starred as Belinda, the "hooker with a heart of gold" neighbor of the character portrayed by Henry Winkler in Ron Howard's comedy Night Shift (also co-starring Michael Keaton), and starred with Tom Cruise in Losin' It (1983). She was offered the role of Mary, the mother in Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but turned it down because she had already signed on to appear in Night Shift.

=== Cheers (1982–1987) === Although she had already been in feature films, Long became famous for her role in the long-running television sitcom Cheers as the character Diane Chambers, who has a tempestuous on-and-off relationship with Sam Malone. The show was slow to capture an audience but eventually became one of the more popular on the air. Amid some controversy, Long left Cheers after season five in 1987. In the Cheers biography documentary, co-star Ted Danson admitted there was tension between them but "never at a personal level and always at a work level" due to their different modes of working. He also stated that Long was much more similar to her TV character than she might have liked to admit, but also said that her performances often "carried the show." Long said in later interviews that it did not occur to her, when deciding to leave, that she was going to "sabotage a show" and she felt confident that the rest of the cast could continue without her. In a 2003 interview with Graham Norton, Long said she left for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was her desire to spend more time with her daughter. In a 2007 interview on Australian television, Long said Danson was "a delight to work with" and talked of her love for co-star Nicholas Colasanto ("Coach"), who was "one of my closest friends on set". She said she left the show because she "didn't want to keep doing the same episode over and over again and the same story. I didn't want it to become old and stale." She went on to say that "working at Cheers was a dream come true...it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. So, yes, I missed it, but I never regretted that decision."

=== Film ===

While appearing on Cheers, Long continued to appear in motion pictures. In 1984, she was nominated for a Best Leading Actress Golden Globe for her performance in Irreconcilable Differences. She also starred in the comedies The Money Pit and Outrageous Fortune. She was offered lead roles in Working Girl, Jumpin' Jack Flash, and My Stepmother Is an Alien but did not accept them. On August 12, 1986, Long signed a production agreement with The Walt Disney Studios through Itsbinso Long Inc. to produce three films for the Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Films labels.

=== Post-Cheers projects (1987–1994) === Long's first post-Cheers project was Hello Again, a comedy about a housewife who is brought back from the dead. This was followed by Troop Beverly Hills, a comedy about another housewife who takes leadership of a 'Wilderness Girl' troop to bond with her daughter and distract herself from divorce proceedings. Neither film was successful with critics or at the box office. Up to this day, Troop Beverly Hills has since acquired a cult following as a 1980s children's film.