Shelley has been cast in many roles of women in charge of their own lives... of women of the modern era. As a Supermodel, she was known as THE Charlie Girl - a gorgeous, glamorous version of the modern liberated woman. She was then cast as hard-hitting reporter Janette Clausen in the telefilm Death Car on the Freeway. She became a Hollywood household name via her role as police officer turned private detective Tiffany Welles in Charlie's Angels. She then played the liberated artist Mary in the Jack Heifner play Vanities. In Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, she played Cathy Long, the pleasant but firm talent coordinator of a television talk show superstar. In the TV movie Found Money, she played Leslie Phillips, another tough TV reporter. In the TV series Cutter to Houston, she played ambitious surgeon Dr. Beth Gilbert. She was later cast as public defender Christine Sullivan on the second season of TV series Night Court but she opted out of the role at the last minute. Then in the telefilm Single Bars Single Women, she played Frankie, a truck stop waitress immersing herself in the currently changing dating scene. "We're in the midst of this big sexual revolution," Shelley told Neighbors mag of the evolving gender roles in the 1980s in Oct of 1984. "If anything, women have more sense of direction. They say, 'We want this and we're heading toward it,'" she added.
