She made seven films with director Robert Altman, who introduced her to cinema in the 1970s, winning Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in France for Three Women. American actress and producer Shelley Duvall has died. The Texas native with big eyes was 75 years old.
About the death on Thursday night informed server of The Hollywood Reporter. The actress passed away in her sleep due to complications related to diabetes. She lived at home in Blanco, Texas.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend has left us. She has suffered too much lately, she is now free,” shared Dan Gilroy, her partner since 1989.
Shelley Duvall in Enlightenment 1980. | Photo: Profimedia.cz
Shelley Duvall made her acting debut in Altman’s 1970 comedy Brewster McCloud, playing a teenage tour guide. A year later, she portrayed a bride-to-be in the film McCabe and Mrs. Miller by the same director.
She also collaborated with Altman on the titles Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Three Women from 1977. It is her character as the fantasizing spa nurse Millie Lammoreaux in this psychological drama that many consider her best performance ever, writes British newspaper The Guardian.
However, the actress most prominently made her mark in the audience’s consciousness as the wife of a writer with an axe, who in the horror film Enlightenment from 1980 portrayed by Jack Nicholson. The film was made over the course of 13 months, and specifically the scene in which Nicholson’s character tortures her with a baseball bat, the director filmed 127 times, according to witnesses.
Before Shelley Duvall fled Hollywood for her native Texas in the mid-1990s, she thrived not only as a versatile and unique actress, but also as the head of her own production company, Think Entertainment. She created innovative children’s shows for cable television, for which she was twice nominated for a Television Emmy Award.
Video: Trailer from the movie Enlightenment
The movie Enlightenment was made by Stanley Kubrick in 1980. | Video: Warner Bros. Entertainment
