Shelley was cast as Tiffany Welles in Charlie's Angels in 1979; and everyone was so excited to see THE Charlie Girl become a Charlie's Angel. But by 1980, she had moved on. She signed a one-year contract with the show which had a three-year option; and she opted to leave the show and move on to other things after a year. "I never expected to be there more than a year and I wasn't," Shelley told TV Tales: Charlie's Angels in 2002. "So I did my year and I moved on," she added, "That was just fine. That was plenty for me." But the publicity jump start she got from Charlie's Angels made her a Hollywood superstar nonetheless and she was considered one of the glamourous new luminaries of Tinseltown. Also, she was determined to make something of her big break. She immediately jumped into theater-acting via the play Vanities by Jack Heifner, alongside Meredith Baxter-Birney and Annette O' Toole. Staged at the Westside Playhouse in Los Angeles, the play was filmed on stage for HBO's Standing Room Only. "I don't know how I got the guts to go right into a play immediately after leaving the series," Shelley said. But her gamble paid off. Shelley won a critical acclaim for her role.
