Who destroyed her career?
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jmix66 — 12 years ago(October 05, 2013 07:26 AM)
Shelley Long was never going to be a big star. She has a limited acting range, she's only modestly attractive and she seems to gravitate towards light comedy rather than drama or anything which might have made her into a "star."
Hollywood is full of better looking women who have and had more to offer.Had Ms. Long simply stayed with Cheers , she could have had a Judith Light/ Jon van Ark career progression. With that she could have had made films for Lifetime and Hallmark channels, maybe received guest spots on various shows and perhaps got roles in the odd low budget project.
Instead, she went for the "brass ring" and failed to reach it. Her career failure is her fault.
Bad films are a crime against humanity. -
shempXIV — 12 years ago(October 12, 2013 09:41 PM)
re: Her career failure is her fault.
At least she's still "working" but your assessment is basically correct. Like David Caruso, McLean Stevenson, and many others, she left a popular show to appear in lots of, in the words of Archie Bunker, crapola. -
Movie-Jay — 12 years ago(October 31, 2013 02:38 PM)
She works all the time. Non-stop. So her career isn't dead or anything.
I just think part of what makes good actors good is picking the right scripts, and it seems like she's one of those actors that says yes to a lot of bad stuff, hence her diminished stature.
Nicolas Cage loves doing bad movies too, but at least he says yes to great ones every other year in-between the bad ones. -
TMC-4 — 11 years ago(November 14, 2014 10:30 PM)
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17895388&postco unt=50
In my opinion, there were two things that really killed Long's career: (1) Her reputation as a difficult performer (which was further enhanced by horror stories about her diva-ish demands on the set of Hello Again) and her subsequently getting fired from My Stepfather Is An Alien); and (2) The arrival of Meg Ryan. Ryan was cheaper, younger, and (at the time) more agreeable and could easily do the type of roles that Long had been considered for just a few years before.