Shelley Duvall, ‘The Shining’ And ‘Nashville’ Star, Dies At Age 75

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Actress Shelley Duvall died Thursday in Blanco, Texas, Variety confirmed with her partner Dan Gilroy. She was 75.

Duvall was known for working with director Robert Altman, who cast her in ‘Brewster McCloud’ for her debut role. She later joined the ensemble cast of “Nashville” in 1975 after gaining popularity. She won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Altman’s ‘3 Women,’ as well as a BAFTA nomination.

Duvall starred as Olive Oyl in Altman’s ‘Popeye’ in 1980, a role many say she was born to play because of he captivating and expressive “big eyes.” She later played Wendy Torrance, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s character in Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic ‘The Shining,’ based on the Stephen King novel.

‘The Shining’ took more than a year of rigorous shooting, and the director pushed Duvall to her extremes. Some of her scenes required more than 100, and was left with psychological trauma in return.

“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,’” the actress said to Hollywood Reporter some time ago.

Duvall appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Underneath’ in 1995 and starred in Jane Campion’s ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ the following year.

She retired from acting in 2002.

In 2023, she returned to acting, appearing in the indie horror movie ‘The Forest Hills.’

She is survived by her partner, musician Dan Gilroy.