Shelley Duvall, the great actress best known for playing Wendy Torrance in “The Shining” and her turns 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, Gilroy added, “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. 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 up against Jack Nicholson as her homicidal husband.
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.”
More to come…
