Shelley Duvall obit

Shelley Duvall, Robert Altman Protege and Tormented Wife in ‘The Shining,’ Dies at 75

The versatile actress, also memorable in 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller,' 'Nashville,' 'Popeye' and '3 Women,' produced TV series for kids as well. 

She was not on the list.

Shelley Duvall, the saucer-eyed, rail-thin waif who starred in seven films directed by her mentor, Robert Altman, and avoided the ax wielded by an unhinged Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, died Thursday. She was 75.

Duvall died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Blanco, Texas, Dan Gilroy, her life partner since 1989, told The Hollywood Reporter.

“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” Gilroy said.

In November 2016, a disheveled Duvall appeared on an episode of the syndicated talk show Dr. Phil and revealed that she was suffering from mental illness. “I am very sick. I need help,” she said. Four years later, THR‘s Seth Abramovitch visited her for a memorable story.

Before she fled Hollywood for her native Texas in the mid-1990s, Duvall had a thriving career as a versatile, one-of-a-kind actress and head of her own production company, Think Entertainment, which created star-studded, innovative children’s programming for cable television that netted her two Emmy Award nominations.

While attending junior college in her hometown of Houston, Duvall was discovered by Altman staff members and talked into taking a screen test. She then made her onscreen debut as teenage seductress and Astrodome tour guide Suzanne Davis in Brewster McCloud (1970).

A decade later, Duvall sang and starred opposite Robin Williams as the iconic comic-strip character Olive Oyl, the strong-willed damsel in distress, in Altman’s live-action adaptation of Popeye.

In between, the childlike star collaborated with Altman as a mail-order bride in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971); as the woman who has a Mississippi romance with bank robber Keith Carradine in Thieves Like Us (1974); as the groupie L.A. Joan, fond of hot pants and platform shoes, in Nashville (1975); as the wife of President Grover Cleveland in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976); and as Millie Lamoureaux, a fantasizing attendant at a Palm Springs health spa for the elderly, in 3 Women (1977).

Asked by The New York Times in 1977 why she chose to keep working with Altman, she said: “He offers me damn good roles. None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him.

“I remember the first advice he ever gave me: ‘Don’t take yourself seriously.’ Sometimes I find myself feeling self-centered, and then all of a sudden that bit of advice will pop into my head and I’ll laugh.”

Altman once noted that Duvall “was able to swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic, even beautiful.”

She won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for portraying Millie.

For the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, Duvall said she was put to the test during the 13-month shoot in England. In the horror classic, she plays the besieged wife Wendy Torrance, who spends a harsh winter at the desolate Overlook Hotel with her writer husband (Nicholson) — who slowly goes mad — and their young son (Danny Lloyd).

Kubrick had her “crying 12 hours a day for weeks on end,” she said in a 1981 interview with People magazine. “I will never give that much again. If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me.”

Before a scene, she told Abramovitch in January 2021, she would put on a Sony Walkman and “listen to sad songs. Or you just think about something very sad in your life or how much you miss your family or friends. But 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.'”

One report said that she was forced to perform her iconic scene with the baseball bat an exhausting 127 times.

Memorable every time she showed up onscreen, Duvall also portrayed a spacy rock journalist in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977); appeared as Pansy in funny scenes with Michael Palin in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981); and played Steve Martin’s supportive pal Dixie in Roxanne (1987).

Roger Ebert wrote in 1980 that Duvall “looks and sounds like almost nobody else … and has possibly played more really different kinds of characters than almost any other young actress of the 1970s.

“In all of her roles, there is an openness about her, as if somehow nothing has come between her open face and our eyes — no camera, dialogue, makeup, method of acting — and she is just spontaneously being the character.”

She returned to acting in 2022 after two decades away with a role in The Forest Hills.

Shelley Alexis Duvall was born in Fort Worth on July 7, 1949, the oldest of four children (and the only daughter). Her parents, Bob, a cattle auctioneer turned attorney, and her mother, Bobbie, a realtor, brought the family to Houston when she was 5. She attended South Texas Junior College, where she studied to be a research scientist and was interested in nutrition.

At a party she threw for her fiancé, artist Bernard Sampson, she met members of Altman’s crew while they were in town filming Brewster McCloud. They brought her to meet the director and producer Lou Adler, and they offered the gawky, 20-year-old with an overbite a role in the movie.

Duvall, who had never traveled outside of Texas, turned them down at first but then agreed to take a screen test. “I got tired of arguing and thought, ‘Maybe I am an actress,’ ” she said.

Her résumé would go on to include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976) for PBS, Frankenweenie (1984), Changing Habits (1997), Home Fries (1998), Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Suburban Commando (1991) and, in her last acting appearance for a while, Manna From Heaven (2002).

In 1981, Duvall recorded Sweet Dreams, an album of music for children, and a year later, Showtime bought her pitch that turned into 26 episodes of the Peabody Award-winning Faerie Tale Theatre, which she executive produced, narrated and appeared on.

Three years later, she created Tall Tales & Legends, a one-hour anthology series, also for Showtime, that featured adaptations of American folk tales.

On both shows, Duvall persuaded A-listers like Williams, Teri Garr, Eric Idle, Jeff Bridges, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli and Vanessa Redgrave to work for scale. Both series also were big sellers on video.

In 1987, she launched Think Entertainment, which specialized in family entertainment like Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories (featuring the likes of Bette Midler, Michael J. Fox and Dudley Moore reciting classic children’s tales) and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and she produced telefilms including ABC’s Backfield in Motion, starring Roseanne and Tom Arnold.

Duvall married Sampson during the filming of Brewster McCloud, but they divorced after four years in 1974, soon after they arrived in Los Angeles.

She later dated musician Paul Simon, whom she met in New York around the time of Annie Hall (he also had a cameo in the movie). They lived together on Central Park West until he left her for her friend, Carrie Fisher. (She said he broke the news to her as she was about to board the Concorde to London to work on The Shining, and she cried during the entire flight.)

Duvall also lived with Stan Wilson, who played Oscar the barber in Popeye, before meeting singer-drummer Gilroy, a member of the pop group Breakfast Club who had been Madonna’s boyfriend. They fell for each other after starring in the 1990 Disney Channel movie Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme.

Survivors include her brothers, Scott, Stewart and Shane.

 

Actress

The Forest Hills (2023)

The Forest Hills

7.3

Mama

2023

 

Seymour Cassel, Shelley Duvall, Louise Fletcher, Cloris Leachman, Wendie Malick, Jill Eikenberry, Frank Gorshin, and Shirley Jones in Manna from Heaven (2002)

Manna from Heaven

5.3

Detective Dubrinski

2002

 

Shelley Duvall in Dreams in the Attic (2000)

Dreams in the Attic

4.9

TV Movie

Nellie

2000

 

Ryan Reynolds in Boltneck (2000)

Boltneck

4.7

Mrs. Stein

2000

 

The 4th Floor (1999)

The 4th Floor

5.8

Martha Stewart

1999

 

Elise Neal, Ashley Monique Clark, Dee Jay Daniels, Marietta DePrima, John Henton, D.L. Hughley, and Eric Allan Kramer in The Hughleys (1998)

The Hughleys

6.1

TV Series

Mrs. Crump

1999

1 episode

 

Maggie Winters (1998)

Maggie Winters

6.1

TV Series

Muriel

1998

1 episode

 

Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson in Home Fries (1998)

Home Fries

5.1

Mrs. Jackson

1998

 

Teri Garr, Shelley Duvall, George Hamilton, Cathy Moriarty, Hilary Duff, and Jeremy Foley in Casper Meets Wendy (1998)

Casper Meets Wendy

5.3

Video

Gabby

1998

 

Tale of the Mummy (1998)

Tale of the Mummy

4.0

Edith Butrose

1998

 

Meredith Henderson in The Adventures of Shirley Holmes (1997)

The Adventures of Shirley Holmes

7.5

TV Series

Alice Flitt

1997

1 episode

 

The Player (1997)

The Player

5.9

TV Movie

1997

 

Larry Brantley and Soccer the Dog in Wishbone (1995)

Wishbone

8.2

TV Series

Renee Lassiter

1997

1 episode

 

Harland Williams in RocketMan (1997)

RocketMan

5.9

Mrs. Randall (uncredited)

1997

 

Shadow Zone: My Teacher Ate My Homework (1997)

Shadow Zone: My Teacher Ate My Homework

5.4

Mrs. Fink

1997

 

Alice Krige in Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997)

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

5.8

Amelia Glahn

1997

 

Christine Cavanaugh, Charlie Adler, and David Eccles in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters (1994)

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

7.2

TV Series

Ocka (voice)

1997

1 episode

 

Alone (1997)

Alone

5.6

TV Movie

Estelle

1997

 

Changing Habits (1997)

Changing Habits

5.8

Sister Agatha

1997

 

Adventures from the Book of Virtues (1996)

Adventures from the Book of Virtues

7.0

TV Series

Fairy (voice, uncredited)

1997

1 episode

 

The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

The Portrait of a Lady

6.2

Countess Gemini

1996

 

Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Peri Gilpin, and Jane Leeves in Frasier (1993)

Frasier

8.2

TV Series

Caroline (voice)

1995

1 episode

 

The Underneath (1995)

The Underneath

6.1

Nurse

1995

 

Aliens for Breakfast (1995)

Aliens for Breakfast

5.9

TV Movie

Mrs. Hastings

1995

 

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (1994)

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

7.2

TV Series

Pottsy Piggle-Wiggle

1994

1 episode

 

L.A. Law (1986)

L.A. Law

7.1

TV Series

Margo Stanton

1994

1 episode

 

Frogs! (1993)

Frogs!

4.6

TV Movie

Annie

1993

 

It's a Bird's Life (1992)

It's a Bird's Life

Video Game

Narrator (voice)

1992

 

The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985)

The Ray Bradbury Theater

7.3

TV Series

Leota Bean

1992

1 episode

 

Christopher Lloyd, Shelley Duvall, Hulk Hogan, Michael Faustino, and Laura Mooney in Suburban Commando (1991)

Suburban Commando

4.6

Jenny Wilcox

1991

 

Cinderella: Shelter Me (1990)

Cinderella: Shelter Me

7.5

Music Video

Shelley Duvall

1990

 

Shelley Duvall in Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme (1990)

Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme

7.4

TV Movie

Little Bo Peep

1990

 

Shelley Duvall, Elliott Gould, and Scott Grimes in Frog (1988)

Frog

5.9

TV Movie

Mrs. Anderson

1988

 

Roxanne (1987)

Roxanne

6.6

Dixie

1987

 

Tall Tales & Legends (1985)

Tall Tales & Legends

7.0

TV Series

1986

1 episode

 

The Twilight Zone (1985)

The Twilight Zone

7.7

TV Series

Margaret (segment "A Saucer of Loneliness")

1986

1 episode

 

Faerie Tale Theatre (1982)

Faerie Tale Theatre

8.3

TV Series

Narrator

Snow White's Mother

Marie ...

1983–1985

3 episodes

 

Frankenweenie (1984)

Frankenweenie

7.2

Short

Susan Frankenstein

1984

 

LeVar Burton and Shavar Ross in Booker (1984)

Booker

7.4

TV Movie

Laura Burroughs

1984

 

The Secret World of the Very Young (1984)

The Secret World of the Very Young

6.0

TV Movie

1984

 

Twilight Theatre (1982)

Twilight Theatre

6.9

TV Movie

1982

 

Time Bandits (1981)

Time Bandits

6.9

Dame Pansy

Pansy

1981

 

Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, and Wesley Ivan Hurt in Popeye (1980)

Popeye

5.4

Olive Oyl

1980

 

The Shining (1980)

The Shining

8.4

Wendy Torrance

1980

 

The Paul Simon Special

7.1

TV Special

Joan of Arc

1977

 

Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall in 3 Women (1977)

3 Women

7.7

Millie Lammoreaux

1977

 

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (1977)

Annie Hall

8.0

Pam

1977

 

Saturday Night Live (1975)

Saturday Night Live

8.0

TV Series

Patron (uncredited)

1976

1 episode

 

Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976)

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

6.7

TV Movie

Bernice

1976

 

Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Geraldine Chaplin, and Frank Kaquitts in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson

6.1

Mrs. Cleveland

1976

 

Robert Blake in Baretta (1975)

Baretta

6.7

TV Series

Aggie

1976

1 episode

 

Nashville (1975)

Nashville

7.6

L. A. Joan

1975

 

Thieves Like Us (1974)

Thieves Like Us

6.9

Keechie

1974

 

Love, American Style (1969)

Love, American Style

6.8

TV Series

Bonnie Lee (segment "Love and the Mr. and Mrs.")

1973

1 episode

 

Cannon (1971)

Cannon

6.8

TV Series

Liz Christie

1973

1 episode

 

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

7.6

Ida Coyle

1971

 

Brewster McCloud (1970)

Brewster McCloud

6.9

Suzanne

1970

 

Producer

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (1994)

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

7.2

TV Series

executive producer

1994

2 episodes

 

Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories (1992)

Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories

7.4

TV Series

executive producer

1992–1993

5 episodes

 

Stories from Growing Up

TV Movie

executive producer

1991

 

Backfield in Motion (1991)

Backfield in Motion

5.1

TV Movie

executive producer

1991

 

Shelley Duvall in Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme (1990)

Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme

7.4

TV Movie

executive producer

1990

 

Nightmare Classics, a limited series of four classic horror titles in the genre of 'The Turn of the Screw' - the others being 'The Eyes of the Panther'; 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' and 'Carmilla.'

Nightmare Classics

6.2

TV Series

executive producer

1989

3 episodes

 

Shelley Duvall, Elliott Gould, and Scott Grimes in Frog (1988)

Frog

5.9

TV Movie

executive producer

1988

 

Faerie Tale Theatre (1982)

Faerie Tale Theatre

8.3

TV Series

executive producer

producer

1982–1987

26 episodes

 

Tall Tales & Legends (1985)

Tall Tales & Legends

7.0

TV Series

executive producer

producer

1985–1986

9 episodes

 

Mr. Bill's Real Life Adventures (1986)

Mr. Bill's Real Life Adventures

5.5

Short

executive producer

1986

 

Popples (1986)

Popples

7.0

TV Movie

executive producer

1986

 

Writer

It's a Bird's Life (1992)

It's a Bird's Life

Video Game

Writer

1992

 

Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories (1992)

Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories

7.4

TV Series

writer: live action sequences

written by

1992

5 episodes

 

Popples (1986)

Popples

7.0

TV Movie

story

1986