Angela Shelton (born December 5, 1972) is an American screenwriter, actress, and documentary film director and producer, best known for the film Tumbleweeds (1999) and the documentary Searching for Angela Shelton (2004), which she wrote, directed, and edited. She is the author of the 2008 book Finding Angela Shelton: The True Story of One Woman's Triumph over Sexual Abuse. Early life After her parents divorced, Shelton lived with her father, stepmother, stepbrother, and stepsister in North Carolina. She and her siblings were sexually molested by her father and stepmother, and were eventually removed from their care and placed in foster care. Early career Shelton was a co-screenwriter, with then-husband Gavin O'Connor, and executive producer for the 1999 film Tumbleweeds, based on her experiences with her serial-marrying mother, to whom she was returned after being in foster care. She appeared in the films Comfortably Numb (1995), The Shrink Is In (2001) and Beautiful Dreamer ( Daysleeper) (2009). On television, Shelton has appeared in episodes of Pacific Blue, Chicago Hope and Becker, and the TV movie The Big Time (2002). Other Films and Projects The feature film, The Hammer (2018) ( Heart, Baby), was written, produced and directed by Shelton and stars Gbenga Akinnagbe, based on the true story of George "The Hammer" Martin, a prison boxer who was offered freedom to fight in the 1984 Olympics and refused to go. In The Eagle and the Albatross (2020), Shelton used her own experiences with her mentors in a comedy drama about an orphaned half-Korean girl, played by Amber Liu, who seeks help from a widowed optometrist, Dan Lauria, with the only thing both of them love - golf. The only problem is, he only has three months to live. The events in her childhood inspired her to make a documentary, Searching for Angela Shelton (2004). In 2001, she rented a motor home and travelled the United States in an effort to interview 76 women who shared her name, succeeding in talking 40 of them. She found that many of the women whom she interviewed had either been raped, beaten, or molested. Shelton also confronted her father, her own abuser, during the production of the film, meeting with him to discuss her molestation. It took three years to complete the film. She distributed the film independently, and appeared in 2004 on the American television programs 48 Hours and The Oprah Winfrey Show. In