Shelley Duvall, star of The Shining and a regular in Robert Altman films dies aged 75 in Bianco, Texas
Shelley Duvall was a Hollywood star who eventually moved out of the spotlight. (AP Photo: Doug Pizac, File)
In short:
Actor Shelley Duvall has died aged 75 at her home in Bianco, Texas.
She was a star of some of the biggest films of the 1970s and 1980s and was a stand-out in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Duvall died from complications of diabetes.
Shelley Duvall, the Texas-born movie star whose wide-eyed, winsome presence was a mainstay in the films of Robert Altman and who co-starred in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, has died.
She was 75.
Her long-time partner, Dan Gilroy, announced that Duvall died Thursday in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas,
"My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner, and friend left us last night," Mr Gilroy said in a statement.
"Too much suffering lately, now she's free. Fly away beautiful Shelley."
Her friend, publicist Gary Springer, said the cause of her death was complications of diabetes.
Duvall was attending junior college in Texas when Altman's staff members, preparing to film Brewster McCloud, encountered her at a party in Houston in 1970.
She would go on to become Altman's protégé.
A significant career
Duvall would appear in Altman films including Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Popeye, Three Women and McCabe & Ms Miller.
Shelley Duvall, left, was a regular in Robert Altman films during their careers. (AP Photo: Levy, File)
"He offers me … good roles," Duvall told The New York Times in 1977.
"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.'"
Duvall, gaunt and gawky, was no conventional Hollywood starlet.
She had a beguiling frank manner and exuded a singular naturalism.
The film critic Pauline Kael called her the "female Buster Keaton".
At her peak, Duvall was a regular star in some of the defining movies of the 1970s and 1980s.
In The Shining, she played Wendy Torrance, who watches in horror as her husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), goes crazy while their family is isolated in the Overlook Hotel.
It was Duvall's screaming face that made up half of the film's most iconic image, along with Jack's axe coming through the door.
But Duvall disappeared from movies almost as quickly as she arrived in them.
Shelley Duvall's performance in The Shining attracted significant attention. (Supplied: Warner Bros.)
By the 1990s, she began retiring from acting.
Her last film role was in 2002's Manna From Heaven.
Duvall retreated from public life.
Time away from Hollywood
Duvall, the oldest of four, was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 7, 1949.
Her father, Robert worked in law and her mother, Bobbie, in real estate.
Duvall moved back to Texas in the mid-1990s.
Around 2002, after making the comedy Manna from Heaven, she retreated from Hollywood completely.
Her whereabouts became a favourite topic of internet sleuths.
Shelley Duvall poses for photographers at the 30th Cannes Film Festival in France, 1977. (AP Photo: Jean-Jacques Levy, File)
A favourite but incorrect theory was that it was residual trauma from the gruelling shoot for The Shining.
Duvall told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021 the experience was traumatising.
Asked if Kubrick was unusually cruel or abusive, Duvall said: "He's got that streak in him. He definitely has that."
Another was that the damage to her home after the Northridge Earthquake was the last straw.
To those living in Texas Hill Country, where Duvall lived for some 30 years, she was neither in "hiding" nor a recluse, but her circumstances were a mystery to both the media and many of her old Hollywood friends.
That changed in 2016, when producers for the Dr Phil show tracked her down and aired a controversial hour-long interview with her in which she spoke about her mental health issues.
"I'm very sick. I need help," Duvall said on the program, which was widely criticised for being exploitative.
She spoke out against the show's namesake, Phil McGraw, years later.
"I found out the kind of person he is the hard way," Duvall told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021.
THR journalist Seth Abramovitch wrote at the time that he went on a pilgrimage to find her because, "it didn't feel right for McGraw's insensitive sideshow to be the final word on her legacy."
Duvall attempted to restart her career, dipping her toe in with the indie horror The Forest Hills that filmed in 2022 and premiered quietly in early 2023.
"Acting again — it's so much fun," Duvall told People at the time.
"It enriches your life."
AP/ABC