Shelley Duvall, the intrepid 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 at the age of 75. Duvall passed away Thursday in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas, her longtime partner, Dan Gilroy, announced. The cause was complications of diabetes, said her friend, the publicist Gary Springer.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner, and friend left us last night,” Gilroy said in a statement. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away beautiful Shelley.”
Duvall was attending junior college in Texas when Altman’s crew members, preparing to film “Brewster McCloud,” encountered her at a party in Houston in 1970. They introduced her to the director, who cast her in “Brewster McCloud” and made her his protégé.
Duvall would go on to appear in Altman films including “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville,” “Popeye,” “Three Women,” and “McCabe & Mrs. Miller.”
“He offers me daring and 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 because 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. But she had a gift for the off-kilter and exuded a singular naturalism. The film critic Pauline Kael dubbed her the “female Buster Keaton.”
In the 1980s, Duvall was a regular star in some of the defining movies of that decade. In “The Shining,” she played Wendy Torrance, who watches in terror as her husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), goes crazy while their family is snowed in at an eerie hotel. It was Duvall’s screaming face that made up half of the film’s iconic image, the other being Jack’s axe coming through the door.
