Off The Record
Star Of “The Shining” And “Nashville,” Shelley Duvall, Dies At Age 75
Shelley Duvall, the big-eyed, waifish actress who won the Cannes actress award for Robert Altman’s “3 Women” and who had to put up with Stanley Kubrick’s harsh directing methods to star in “The Shining,” passed away on Thursday in Blanco, Texas, from complications related to her diabetes. Her age was 75.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner, and friend left us last night. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away beautiful Shelley,” said Gilroy in a statement.
Duvall was well-known for her collaborations with filmmaker Altman, who gave her her first on-screen role in “Brewster McCloud.” Before emerging as a member of the ensemble cast of “Nashville” in 1975, she later starred in his films “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Thieves Like Us.” Following her success in Nashville, Altman cast her in Buffalo Bill and the Indians before allowing her unique on-screen persona to take center stage in “3 Women,” for which she received a BAFTA nomination and the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress.
Duvall met Paul Simon on the set of Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” in which he played a Rolling Stone journalist, in 1977. They spent two years dating.
In 1980, Duvall played Olive Oyl in Altman’s “Popeye,” a part that seemed to come naturally to her because of her enormous eyes. She was cast as Wendy Torrance, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s character in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” which is based on the Stephen King novel, because of her unsettling performance as a health spa employee in “3 Women.”
Filming for “The Shining” took more than a year, and the renownedly tough director tested Duvall to the breaking point. More than 100 takes were needed for some of her scenes in “The Shining.”
Years later, she talked about the difficult shoot with the Hollywood Reporter. “After a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’ And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry. To wake up on a Monday morning so early and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying. I’d be like, ‘Oh no, I can’t, I can’t.’ And yet I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me, too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’“
She also starred in Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” and Steve Martin’s comedy “Roxanne.”
Duvall created a number of children’s anthology shows based on beloved tales in the 1980s. Notable directors Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ivan Passer were among the cast members of “Faerie Tale Theatre,” “Tall Tales & Legends,” “Nightmare Classics,” and “Bedtime Stories.” Robin Williams, Jamie Lee Curtis, Elliot Gould, Laura Dern, Molly Ringwald, and Ed Asner were among the guest stars.
She met Altman at a party while he was filming “Brewster McCloud” in Texas. Altman was born in Fort Worth, Texas.
next his return to Texas, Duvall acted in Jane Campion’s “The Portrait of a Lady” the next year and Steven Soderbergh’s “The Underneath” in 1995. In 2002, she announced her acting retirement.
Despite leading a solitary existence, she received bad press for sensationalizing her mental health issues during her 2016 interview on “Dr. Phil.” Seth Abramovitch, a reporter for the Hollywood Reporter, interviewed her in 2021 after visiting Texas and discovering that, despite her oddities, she was well-liked in her Texas Hill Country town and delighted to reflect on her career.
After many years, she made a comeback to acting in 2023, starring in the independently released horror film “The Forest Hills.”
Her brothers, Scott, Stewart, and Shane, as well as her partner, musician Dan Gilroy, survive her.
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