Poor Shelley, I hope she recovers soon.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds17244.html

Cheers' actress in painkiller overdose
Thursday, November 25 2004, 16:16 GMT -- by Daniel Saney


Ex-Cheers actress Shelley Long is in an LA hospital after being found to have overdosed on painkillers.

Long is famous for playing the out-of-place waitress Diane Chambers in the sitcom based in a Boston bar. For the first two series of the show, Long's character was central, much of the plot revolving around her troubled romance with barman Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson. She then went on to the big screen with The Brady Bunch Movie.

In recent times she has reportedly been suffering from depression following the break-up of her marriage last year.

The Sun quotes a friend of Long's as saying: "A week ago, Shelley, who lives alone, kept the curtains drawn. She wasn't eating. She has always been thin, but she was almost skeletal."

That is horrible news! I had no idea she was in that lowly state.

how sad...

:eek: I hope she's alright...

Oh my God. How sad. I hope everything turns out all right.

Quotes from The Sun? Suddenly, this story loses believability for me.

Still, if it is true, I hope she gets to feeling better. Hasn't she been sick an awful lot recently? I know she's complained about health problems pretty often in the past five, ten years.

Shelley is out of hospital now.

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/35055.htm

From the NY Post -

November 26, 2004 -- Bubbly blond "Cheers" star Shelley Long - depressed over the bust-up of her marriage - was rushed to the hospital after taking an overdose of painkillers in an apparent suicide bid.

The 55-year-old actress, who played ditzy waitress Diane Chambers on the classic TV sitcom, was taken to UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles after the heartbreaking incident.

Long had been extremely depressed in recent months, was barely eating and often spent long periods of time in bed, said friends, speculating that she tried to kill herself. "It is very sad to see this woman, who is only 55, looking like she's turning 90," one pal told The Sun newspaper of London.

Another friend said, "For 18 months, she's been getting more and more depressed. It's like seeing someone falling off a cliff.

"She told some of her good friends she felt she had nothing to live for."

The incident took place Nov. 16, and hospital records show that Long was discharged Tuesday. Her mom, in a brief telephone interview, confirmed to The Post that her daughter is no longer in the hospital.

In a weird twist, Long once played a depressed woman committed to a hospital for depression in the 1979 TV movie "The Cracker Factory."

She's not the only "Cheers" cast member to have been felled by depression — Kelsey Grammer, too, has also had severe bouts with the blues.



Things got rough for the actress last year, when her securities-broker husband, Bruce Tyson, walked out after 22 years of marriage. They are now divorcing, and Long had to leave their Hollywood mansion when it was sold. She now lives alone.

She met Tyson on a blind date in 1979. They were wed two years later — it was her second marriage — and have a daughter, Juliana, 19.

The actress starred in several films since bolting "Cheers" in 1987, six years before it ended in 1993.

Among the flicks were 1995's "The Brady Bunch Movie," in which she played Carol Brady, and 2000's "Dr. T and the Women."

Many see her career as a classic example of what happens to some TV stars who give up popular roles to seek movie fame.

She never regained the popularity she enjoyed as the overeducated "Cheers" barmaid, who was a foil to bar owner Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson.

She's slated for a rare, pretaped guest appearance tonight in the ABC series "Complete Savages."

For "Cheers, " she won an Emmy and two Golden Globes.

Eddie Doyle, the real-life Ted Danson who's served drinks for 30 years at the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston, the bar on which Cheers was based, said:

"I'm just really surprised and hope she's going to be all right. I guess they say things like that happen around the holidays."

Additional reporting by Mark Bulliet, David K. Li and Bill Sanderson

Aparent suicide is even worse! I hope that this story isn't true.

slackermonkey,
What's wrong with The Sun?

I mean -- if it was The Star or The Inquirer, I could see doubting the story's validity.




Later,
Art

I don't want to speak for slackermonkey, but I guess the Sun has stretched some stories in the past.

I just read it myself. This is so sad.

Her friends said she looks like she's 90 years old and she's only in her 50's. :(

I've got to see that Complete Savages episode to see what she looks like.

I saw her on the "100 Greatest..." the other night & she looked fine.

would you really describe Diane as ditzy?

I'm glad she's OK! That's really sad she was doing that to herself... hopefully she gets professional help.



And yes, thirteen, I would describe Diane as ditzy. She was almost as ditzy as Lucy Ricardo.

How terrible :(

Hi all,
Even though Diane was not the intellectual she thought she was, or perhaps even pretended to be, I would never in a million years call her "ditsy." Ditsy means scatterbrained. The closest thing to ditsy on "Cheers" was Nick's twinkie Loretta.









Later,
Art

I hope that she will be okay that is so sad.

Originally posted by Artfiore1
slackermonkey,
What's wrong with The Sun?

I mean -- if it was The Star or The Inquirer, I could see doubting the story's validity.




Later,
Art

The Sun can be just as unreliable as The Star and The Inquirer. It's better than those two, but not by much.

But seeing as the story's been picked up by other sources, I'm sure it's true.

slackermonkey,
It's my understanding that The Star and The Inquirer actually *make up* stories which have no basis in fact and are complete works of fiction. Does The Sun do that also?





Later,
Art



.

I just heard it on WNBC in New York.

Originally posted by Artfiore1
slackermonkey,
It's my understanding that The Star and The Inquirer actually *make up* stories which have no basis in fact and are complete works of fiction. Does The Sun do that also?





Later,
Art



.

Occasionally, not to the same extent. They usually just exaggerate stories or blow things out of proportion.

But like I said, I believe this is legitimate news. I shouldn't let my personal feelings about The Sun take this too off-topic. I hope Shelley Long seeks professional help or something, because she's clearly in a fragile emotional state. Attempted suicide is nothing to be taken lightly.

(I wonder how long it's going to be before someone makes a comparison between Diane going to a sanitarium and me saying Shelley Long should seek a psychiatrist. Hopefully, she doesn't find a shrink like Frasier.)

Here's a different spin on it, taken from her manager. So this could be the manager trying to put a positive spin on it.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/aptv_story.asp?category=1401&slug=People%20Long

LOS ANGELES -- "Cheers" alum Shelley Long was back home after being briefly hospitalized because she took a dose of medication to treat back pain and the drug made her ill, her manager said Friday.

"Shelley took an extra pain pill for her back, which she hurt when she fell on the set of `Cheers' many years ago," Martin Mickelson told The Associated Press. "She had a reaction to it ... but she is now home and she is fine."

The actress, who played the prim and neurotic Diane Chambers on the hit 1980s sitcom, was treated overnight sometime within the last two weeks at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center, Mickelson said.

"She had a nice Thanksgiving," he added.

Mickelson denied published reports Friday that suggested Long, 55, had apparently taken an overdose of painkillers brought on by the breakup of her 22-year marriage to stockbroker Bruce Tyson.

The New York Post reported Long was hospitalized on Nov. 16 and released Tuesday.

Ugh. Now I don't know which to believe, though I'd rather buy into the second.

And "prim and neurotic" is a much better description for Diane than "ditzy." :p

I hope what the manager is saying is true, but I think he's doing some "damage control."

Wow, I hope she recovers.

I wonder when she fell on the set.

Yeah, I wonder too. It must have been a pretty bad fall to give her back pain that still lasts twenty years or so later.

I hope the story from her manager is true, of course.

This story was on Extra last night. They said that it was a failed suicide attempt. It doesn't really matter to me how it happened... I just hope shes going to be okay.

Man, that's horrible.

I agree - Diane was not ditzy.

And yes, it does sound like her manager is doing a little damage control.

Wow! that's terrible. i saw shelley on complete savages yesterday and i thought she looked fine. hmmm i wonder how true this story is, but it certainly seems plausible.

:( Shelley's in my thoughts and prayers

She looked absolutely great on Complete Savages, funny as can be on the show, even as small of a part as she had

"prim and neurotic" is a much better description

Originally posted by ThirteenInchEscape
"prim and neurotic" is a much better description

great description

this would be very VERY bad if shelley really did want to die. not only because, well she would be dead, but no shelley = no reunion! :eek:

Has anybody heard anything recently about how Shelley's doing? If you find out post it, cause i'm recently interested to see how she's doing.

Apparently, she had made a public statement that she did not attempt suicide, and that although she was having trouble coping with her divorce/separation, she was quoted as saying it wasn't anything worth killing herself over.