Award-winning actress Shelley Long was born on August 23, 1949 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She has won both Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for her performance in the classic NBC sitcom
Cheers . The daughter of schoolteachers, she was an active member of her high school speech team, and at one point won the National Championship in Original Oratory. She also made speeches about the importance of sex education during her high school years. After studying drama briefly at Northwestern University, she left to pursue a career in modeling and acting. Long has appeared in films such as The Money Pit, Troop Beverly Hills, and The Brady Bunch in the White
House .
Diane Chambers is played by Shelley Long in the award-winning NBC sitcom Cheers. After her fiancé abandons her during the first episode, she works as a waitress at the Cheers bar and tries to pick up the pieces of her life. She's generally pretentious and sports a superiority complex, often getting on the nerves of the customers and her fellow barmaid Carla. She also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, is generally neurotic, and is also revealed to hoard stuffed animals. She has a brief romance with Dr. Frasier, though she ends up leaving him hanging at the altar.
(Image courtesy of NBC)