Shelley Duvall, the saucer-eyed, rail-thin waif who starred in seven films directed by her mentor, Robert Altman, and avoided the ax wielded by an unhinged Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, has died. She was 75.
Duvall died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Blanco, Texas, according to Dan Gilroy, who had been her life partner since 1989.
Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter: “My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”
Duvall would go on to memorable roles in some of his other movies, including his ensemble 1975 film Nashville, and 3 Women in 1977, which won her the Cannes Best Actress Award.
In a Boca Raton News story published in 1977, Altman hailed the actress as being able to “to swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic — even beautiful.”
Duvall’s other notable work includes her performances in Annie Hall, Roxanne and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. She enjoyed an early hit in the premium cable era, as host and producer of Showtime’s “Faerie Tale Theatre” from 1982 to 1987. She worked in the entertainment industry for decades before she fell on hard times.
In April of this year, Duvall, who hadn’t acted since 2002’s Manna from Heaven, gave a rare interview to the New York Times in which she reflected on her career and more recent absence from film and TV projects.
“I was a star; I had leading roles,” she said. “People think it’s just aging, but it’s not. It’s violence.”
“How would you feel if people were really nice, and then, suddenly, on a dime … they turn on you?” she added. “You would never believe it unless it happens to you. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s true.”
At the time, she and Gilroy were living in an “isolated but serene” one-story home in Texas Hill Country. Over the years, Duvall retained a large fanbase of supporters. She returned to screens in 2023 for the horror film The Forest Hills.
“I wanted to act again. And then this guy kept calling, and so I wound up doing it,” Duvall quipped in her interview with the Times. “If you ever do a horror film, other horror films are going to come to you, no matter what you do.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment