Shelley Duvall, Icon of ‘The Shining’ and Robert Altman Films, Dead at 75
Shelley Duvall, the great actress best known for playing Wendy Torrance in “The Shining” and her performances for Robert Altman, has died. She was 75. Her partner, Dan Gilroy, confirmed the news of her passing first to The Hollywood Reporter. Duvall had been suffering from complications from diabetes, according to Gilroy. They lived in Blanco, Texas, where Duvall had been on retreat from Hollywood since the ’90s, appearing in TV and independent film.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” Gilroy told the outlet.
In a statement shared with IndieWire, Scott Goldberg, director of Duvall’s final film “The Forest Hills,” said, “Shelley leaves behind an amazing legacy and will be missed by so many people, myself included. I am proud of her for overcoming adversity to act again and will always be forever grateful for her friendship and kindness.”
Duvall, born in Texas, was a discovery of Robert Altman, who cast her in his film “Brewster McCloud” before she went on to collaborate with the director on “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville,” and then “3 Women,” Altman’s dream-inspired masterpiece and the film that won her Best Actress at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. In that film, she starred as Millie Lammoreaux, a spacy Palm Springs health spa worker who becomes roommates with Sissy Spacek, merging into a Bergmanesque folie a deux. Duvall’s heavily improvised performance is one of her best, a masterclass in playing a character uncomfortable in their own skin. The role won her honors from Los Angeles and New York film critics groups as well.
She later starred as Olive Oyl in Robert Altman’s 1980 musical “Popeye,” now a widely reappraised cult classic. Duvall is also remembered for her brief appearance in “Annie Hall” as a dotty rock music critic, bringing the word “transplendent” into the cultural lexicon.
But Duvall is most known for her turn in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 “The Shining,” the year-long production at Elstree Studios that infamously demanded a great deal of the actress as detailed in Kubrick’s daughter Vivan’s making-of documentary. It’s one of the all-time great horror movie performances, in which she held her own against Jack Nicholson as her homicidal husband. Duvall received a Razzie Award for her performance, which organizers of the honors for the year’s worst in film later rescinded.
In 2021, Duvall spoke candidly with The Hollywood Reporter for her first proper interview in some time about why she fled Hollywood and the difficulties of making “The Shining.”
In the ’80s and early ’90s, Duvall became a beloved children’s TV presence, hosting the likes of “Faerie Tale Theatre” (which inspired the famous “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall” intro) and “Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories” among other programs. Her last film credit for two decades was 2002’s “Manna from Heaven” before Duvall retreated from Hollywood. She briefly returned to the screen for the 2023 low-budget horror movie “Forest Hills.”
