Shelley Duvall, the actress who co-starred with Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, died Thursday at the age of 75. According to her partner, musician Dan Gilroy, the artist died in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas, due to complications from diabetes.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner and friend has left us. Too much suffering lately, she is free now. Fly high beautiful Shelley,” Gilroy said in a statement released to the press.
Duvall, born July 7, 1949, in Fort Worth, was studying nutrition at South Texas Junior College when part of American film director Robert Altman’s crew preparing to shoot “Brewster McCloud” met her at a party in Houston in 1970.
That year, she made her big screen debut in the film Flying Is for the Birds (1970), a black comedy directed by Altman. This collaboration marked the beginning of a fruitful professional relationship with the filmmaker, who also cast her in roles in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Criminals (1974), and Nashville (1975).
With the drama 3 Women (1977), also by Altman, she began to gain more recognition, following winning the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress and being nominated for a BAFTA Award. That same year, she appeared in a supporting role in Woody Allen’s satirical romantic comedy Annie Hall, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.
In 1980 she became even more famous following starring as Olivia in Altman’s live-action version of Popeye (1980) and Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s horror film The Shining (1980).
Taking part in Kubrick’s work, Duvall confessed years later, caused her mental health problems due to the pressures the filmmaker subjected her to. “I had health problems because of the stress of the character and being away from home. I had just broken up with a relationship and everything was very tumultuous,” she once said.
In the latter half of the 1980s, Duvall turned to producing television programming aimed at children and young people, creating and presenting the shows Faerie Tale Theatre (1982–1987), Tall Tales & Legends (1985–1987), and Nightmare Classics (1989).
In the 1990s, she played supporting roles in Steven Soderbergh’s thriller The Underneath (1995) and the Henry James adaptation Portrait of a Lady (1996), directed by Jane Campion, among others.
Since 2002, she has remained away from acting and the public scene, living in her mansion in Blanco, Texas, where she died on Thursday due to complications from the diabetes she suffered from. In the last 22 years, she only participated in the horror film The Forest Hills (2023), directed by Scott Goldberg.
