Shelley Smith, the ’70s super model turned actor known for her work on “The Associates” and “For Love and Honor,” died Tuesday after going into cardiac arrest days earlier. She was 70.
Smith died at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, her husband Michael Maguire said in a video posted to Facebook on Wednesday.
“She loved helping people. Most of all, she helped me. She made me a much better person than I ever would have been. We had a great marriage,” Maguire said in the video. “I don’t know how to go on without her. But I know that we had an incredible relationship and it was as pure as anything could be.”
Smith kicked off her modeling career in the early 1970s, landing the cover of Harper’s Bazaar and getting features in Vogue, Mademoiselle and Glamour magazines. In 1979, she stepping into the television world and made her star debut on “The Associates” alongside Martin Short, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Alley Mills. Smith appeared as Sarah James in all 13 episodes of the legal drama before it ended in 1980.
From 1983 to 1984, she starred as Captain Carolyn Engel on the NBC military series “For Love and Honor” with Cliff Potts, Yaphet Kotto and Gary Grubbs. Throughout the ’80s, Smith made guest appearances on shows like “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Simon & Simon” and “Murder She Wrote.”
In addition to her scripted roles on screen, Smith was a prolific game show contestant, having appeared on “Super Password,” “Body Language” and Dick Clark’s “10,000 Pyramid.”
Following her successful acting run, Smith went on to found an egg donor fertilization company called Hatch Fertility, which she created after the successful in vitro fertilization pregnancy with her twin children, Miranda and Nicholas. “I’ll never forget the moment of looking into this little boy’s eyes,” Smith said of Nicholas in the LA Times following the twin’s birth. “He wasn’t fussing or crying. He came straight down from heaven, and he just looked right at me.”
Smith is survived by her children and her husband.