Actress best known for playing Wendy Torrance in The ShiningÂ
Rake thin, with wide eyes, "a Modigliani face and tremulous, broken-doll voice", Shelley Duvall would have been a striking screen presence at any point in cinema history, said Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian. Even so, it was fortunate that she began acting in the 1970s, when the "unorthodox and the eccentric" were briefly embraced by Hollywood; and luckier still that she fell into the orbit of the director Robert Altman, who spotted her talent and enfolded her in his "unofficial repertory company". Duvall, he said, could "swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic – even beautiful". He cast her in seven of his films, including "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", "Nashville" and "Thieves Like Us", and helped turn her into one of the biggest stars of the decade.Â
Yet it was for a film made by Stanley Kubrick that Duvall became best known, said The New York Times. In 1980's "The Shining", adapted from Stephen King's book, she played Wendy Torrance, whose writer husband (Jack Nicholson) loses his mind when they move into a mountain hotel, to work as its off-season caretakers. The shoot was gruelling. Famously exacting, Kubrick insisted on 127 takes for the scene in which Wendy tries to fend off her raging husband with a baseball bat; she worked 12 to 16 hours a day for 13 months, and was required, she said, to cry "for at least nine of those months".
King, who hated the film, described Kubrick's Wendy as "one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on screen", and likened her to a "screaming dishrag". The critics were not initially kind about Duvall's performance. But since then, it has been re-evaluated as a "shockingly realistic portrait of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship". As for Kubrick's extreme methods, these have been described as tantamount to abuse. Duvall said that she'd never put herself through a shoot like that again. On the other hand, she said that Kubrick's demanding direction had helped her to reach the depths of Wendy's fear and horror; and that she'd not trade the experience "for anything". Â
Shelley Duvall was brought up in Texas. Her father was a lawyer; her mother an estate agent. She grew up loving books and stories, but aspired to become a nutritionist. At college, however, she was horrified by an experiment involving vivisection, and dropped out. She was 20, and living in Houston, when she met some of the crew working on Altman’s "Brewster McCloud". They told the director about this captivating young woman, and he was so taken with her, he gave her a small role in the film. Over the next few years, the parts he gave her got bigger, and in 1977 Woody Allen cast her in "Annie Hall". On set, she met Paul Simon, who had a cameo role in the film, and they began an affair. He broke off the relationship on the day she flew to England to film "The Shining".Â
When that shoot finished, Altman – a more freewheeling director whom she adored – gave her an altogether lighter role as Olive Oyl in "Popeye", opposite Robin Williams. The film was a flop, but her endearing and subtle performance was highly praised. Later in the decade, she threw herself into a new project, creating and presenting a children’s TV anthology series called the "Faerie Tale Theatre", which featured a host of big-name stars who’d agreed to appear for a fraction of their normal fee. After that, her acting career waned. Then her home in LA was destroyed in an earthquake. She moved back to Texas in the mid-1990s, and faded from view. In 2016, however, she made a dramatic reappearance on the TV talk show "Dr. Phil". She seemed distressed, paranoid and incoherent, and he was accused of exploiting her fragile mental health. She made her final screen appearance in 2023. She is survived by the musician Dan Gilroy, her partner since 1989.