Shelley became a megastar when she was cast as Tiffany Welles on Charlie's Angels; but unfortunately, it came with a price. After being in the series, she was typecast (just like her co-Angels) and had a difficult time shaking off the image the show had inadvertently given her. She was pigeon-holed. But Shelley was used to challenges and was undaunted. She simply charted her own course, as she always did. In college, she confounded everyone by going to Australia instead of Paris for her junior-year-abroad at Smith - eventually making it part of the school's destinations. As a model, she unusually prioritized her education, using it as a vehicle to further educate herself. "It was never a thing where she was going to be the best model in the world; she simply became one of the best more or less in spite of herself," said Ford Models, Inc. matriarch Eileen Ford of the Supermodel she represented. So as an actress, Shelley had the same attitude. She simply accepted the challenge, studied her craft, worked hard and got up whenever she stumbled. "It was hard crawling out of that box, and it took a while," Shelley said. She eventually received praise for her work on the plays Vanities, Close Ties and Born Yesterday; as well as in the films The King of Comedy and Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer - and much later for her work on The Stepfather and Frequent Flyer.
