Actress Shelley Duvall, who had roles in “The Shining” and won a Cannes actress award for “3 Women,” has died, according to media reports Thursday. She was 75.
Duvall died Thursday in Blanco, Texas, Variety reported and was confirmed by her partner Dan Gilroy.
In Robert Altman’s “3 Women,” Duvall won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress and was nominated for a BAFTA award for the role.
She had roles in “Annie Hall” and “Popeye” but is best know for her role in “The Shining,” directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the Stephen King novel.
Duvall played Wendy Torrance, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining.” During the making of “The Shining,” Duvall was tested by Kubrick, known as a demanding director, and it took more than a year to shoot the movie. Some of the scenes took more than 100 takes and the baseball sequence is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most takes of a scene with dialogue.
She worked with Altman on several projects. She was in “Brewster McCloud” as her first screen role. She went on to appear in his films “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Thieves Like Us” before starring as part of the ensemble cast of “Nashville” in 1975. Following her part in “Nashville,” Duvall was cast in Altman’s “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” then “3 Women” in 1977.
She was Olive Oyl in Altman’s “Popeye” in 1980, playing opposite Robin Williams in the title role before landing a role in Kubrik’s “The Shining.”
She told the Hollywood Reporter years later about how difficult it was to make “The Shining.”
“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,” she said.”
Among her other roles were Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” and the comedy “Roxanne” with Steve Martin.
She returned to acting after many years, appearing in the indie horror movie “The Forest Hills” in 2023. It was not widely available.
She is survived by Gilroy, her partner and musician.