She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in The Elephant Man (1979) and received additional nominations for her work on Absurd Person Singular (1975), Stepping Out (1987), and Billy Elliot (2009).

[1] Shelley made her Broadway debut as Gwendolyn Pigeon in the original 1965 production of The Odd Couple (starring Art Carney and Walter Matthau).

She told The New York Times in a 1979 interview that she had "months of the most intensive deep-water swimming — more than I’d ever been called upon to do in my life" when she played Rosalind in As You Like It at the 1972 Stratford Festival in Ontario.

[23] Thereafter she took on numerous roles in television and films such as The Boston Strangler (1968),[24] Some Kind of a Nut (1969),[24] The Whoopee Boys (1986),[24] Little Noises (1992),[25] The Road to Wellville (1994),[26] and she played Helen Moskowitz in the Emmy-winning 1998 Frasier episode "Merry Christmas, Mrs.

[28] She lent her voice to several roles in Disney animated films; notably, Amelia Gabble (the Goose) in The Aristocats (1970),[29] Lady Kluck, Maid Marian's sidekick and lady-in-waiting, in Robin Hood (1973),[30] and Lachesis the Fate in Hercules.