Shelley Hack

Hack was born in Greenwich, Connecticut,[1] the eldest of six children. Her father was a Wall Street financial analyst, and her mother was a former Conover model. After schooling at Greenwich Academy, she progressed to Smith College, spent her junior year studying archeology at the University of Sydney in Australia, graduated from Smith with a bachelor of arts in history, and moved to New York.[2]

Hack began her career as a teen fashion model and became the face of Revlon's Charlie perfume from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s. Life proclaimed her one of the million-dollar faces in the beauty industry who were able to negotiate previously unheard of lucrative and exclusive deals with giant cosmetics companies, were instantly recognizable, and whose names became known to the general public. Shelley ranked among a handful of the 1970s supermodels.[3]

Her feature film debut was a bit part in Woody Allen's Academy Award winning film Annie Hall (1977), as "Street Stranger". In her second film appearance, she was the leading lady in the Joe Brooks romance drama, If Ever I See You Again, but the film was not a success (“a bomb,” she admits). Shortly thereafter she was cast as Kate Jackson's replacement on the television series Charlie's Angels for one season (1979-1980), playing the sophisticated character Tiffany Welles, the role for which she is probably best known. She beat out many competitors for the role, including Michelle Pfeiffer and Barbara Bach.[2] However, after an initial spike in the ratings, they began to erode, so in an attempt to revitalize declining ratings and regain the show's popularity, ABC released Hack from her contract in February 1980. A statement later issued by Spelling-Goldberg read: "When she signed her contract for the series, Miss Hack had a personal agreement that she could review her continuation with the show at the end of her first season since series television represented an enormous change in her career and lifestyle,"[4] implying she was included in the decision to exit Charlie's Angels. In an interview, Hack said "They can say I didn't work out, but it isn't true. What happened was a network war. A business decision was made. Change the timeslot or bring on some new publicity. How to get publicity? A new Angel hunt. Who is the obvious person to replace? I am — the new kid on the block."[5] Despite the conflicting reports, Hack later stated "I never expected to be there more than a year and I wasn't. I did my year and I moved on."[6]

Following Hack's departure from Charlie's Angels, the actress played a variety of supporting roles. Hack received positive reviews in Martin Scorsese's film The King of Comedy (1983), in which she played Cathy Long, a passive-aggressive executive. She starred with Annette O'Toole and Meredith Baxter Birney in the critically acclaimed Vanities (1981), a television production of the stage play about the lives, loves and friendship of three Texas cheerleaders starting from high school to post-college graduation; it aired as a part of Standing Room Only, a series on HBO. She had a well-received leading role in the cult horror film The Stepfather and was a regular on two short-lived TV series of the 1980s: Cutter to Houston (1983) and Jack and Mike (1986–87). She had several more notable guest appearances in film and television up until 1997. Additionally, she narrated the audiobook The Lord of Hawkfell Island, for which AudioFile stated "Shelley Hack's mellifluous voice brings this Viking tale alive."[7]

In 1987, Hack, a former smoker, was named the national chairperson for the National Lung Association's and American Medical Association's campaign to educate young women on the dangers of cigarette smoking.

Hack completed a Master's degree in business administration from New York Institute of Technology[8] and shortly afterwards retired from acting. Upon her decision to stop acting in the late 1990s, she entered politics. Hack became a voting registration and polling station supervisor in the 1997 elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina and produced the first-ever televised presidential debates there as well. She also produced the debates in Sarajevo, Mostar, and the two in Banja Luka. In 1997, Hack founded the Shelley Hack Media Consultancy (SHMC). Hack also worked for two years with the largest media conglomerate in Eastern Europe where she helped develop and build the infrastructure for the largest state of the art film studio complex in the region.[8] Hack worked in the television sector for 10 years, creating ethnically diverse television programs in Eastern Europe. Additionally, she became a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy (PCIP).[9]

In October 2000, appearing as herself, Hack returned to the Charlie's Angels Townsend Agency office as a guest host on Biography, which featured profiles of several Charlie's Angels stars during Hello Angels Week. In January 2008, Hack made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The episode, "Classic Americana",[10] featured Hack as Revlon's Charlie perfume model in a 1976 television ad with Bobby Short at the piano.[11][12] "It was a time when women were changing" Hack stated to Oprah Winfrey. "Women looked at [the ad] and said 'I want to be like that.'" Referring to the later Revlon commercials and Charlie's Angels, Hack stated "I was lucky. There were two things I was in that were about making women feel a little more empowered".[10]

Hack and her husband Harry Winer are Co-Presidents of the production company Smash Media, which develops and produces content for motion pictures, television and new media.[8]

Hack has been married to Harry Winer since 1990. The couple have one child, daughter Devon Rose Winer (b. 1990).[13][14]

• Shelley Hack on IMDb