Shelley Duvall, who has died aged 75, was an actress whose uncanny screen presence made her the darling of the art-cinema director Robert Altman and a natural fit for the slow-build psychological horror of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Whereas more traditional leading ladies sought to cultivate an air of mystery before the camera, Duvall – small and almost impossibly slight, with large dark eyes and a distinctive reedy voice – turned her natural awkwardness to her advantage. “There is an openness about her,” observed the film critic Roger Ebert in 1980, “as if somehow nothing has come between her open face and our eyes… and she is just spontaneously being the character.”
Robert Altman, who had discovered her when she was 21 years old, recognised the value of that spontaneity, advising her never to take acting lessons and encouraging her full participation in shaping the direction of his bold, often experimental films.
In return Shelley Duvall remained loyal to him throughout the most prolific period of his career, even though his commercial successes were matched by several flops. Among the more well-received was the crime drama Thieves Like Us (1974) and the satirical musical-comedy Nashville (1975), the second of which had her dancing in platform shoes and multicoloured hot pants.
She won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in Altman’s 3 Women (1977) as the aspiring sophisticate Millie, a role that she had largely created herself. Production had begun when the script was just a few pages long and Shelley Duvall improvised the bulk of Millie’s dialogue, combing through women’s magazines during filming breaks in order to develop a feel for the character.
A similar level of dedication characterised her performance as Jack Nicholson’s terrorised wife Wendy in The Shining (1980), though most reviewers at the time failed to mention her. Those who did were less than kind. Stephen King, the author of the original horror story, thought that Kubrick’s take on Wendy made her “one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film. She’s basically just there to scream and be stupid.”
In later years Shelley Duvall likened the experience of working for Kubrick to primal scream therapy: “Six days a week, 12- to 16-hour days, half an hour off for lunch, for a year and one month. The role demanded that I cry for at least nine of those months.”
One scene, in which Shelley Duvall had to confront Nicholson with a baseball bat, required 127 takes before Kubrick declared himself satisfied. The strain became so great that her physical health suffered; at one point she presented the director with the strands of her hair that had fallen out. She got through by cultivating a close bond with Nicholson, who would take her out for Scotch after the day’s filming had wrapped.
Not surprisingly, Shelley Duvall came away with a dim view of the draconian management style favoured by directors such as Kubrick. She far preferred Altman’s nurturing approach, and applied the same philosophy to her professional relationships. By the end of the 1980s she was among the best-connected people in the industry, having built up her address book through a combination of film work and sheer determination. Carrie Fisher, Malcolm McDowell, Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli and Vanessa Redgrave all featured on her children’s anthology series Faerie Tale Theatre, one of the first shows to be made for the cable television network Showtime.
Once again, Shelley Duvall threw herself wholeheartedly into the project, taking a hand in every aspect of production. Each episode opened with her narration – and the words “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall” – set against a variety of picturesque backgrounds. She dealt with budget constraints by persuading her contacts to appear for a fraction of their usual fee, and spent the remaining money on state-of-the-art filming technology that set the programme apart from the cheaply executed fare that dominated cable television at the time. The show won the Parents’ Choice Award, the Peabody Award and the Television Critics Award, running for six series until 1987.
For many of the actors involved, Fairie Tale Theatre was a welcome chance to appear in something that their children would enjoy. For Shelley Duvall, the motivation was rather different. Critics often observed that there was a childlike aspect to her mannerisms, and an innocence that endured even under the glare of celebrity. “You’re never grown up,” she told an interviewer in 1991. “We’re all still dealing with the same hopes, same fears, same dreams that we had as children.”
The oldest of four children, she was born Shelley Alexis Duvall on July 7 1949 in Fort Worth, Texas. Her father Robert (no relation to the actor) was a cattle auctioneer and insurance man who later became a criminal lawyer. As a consequence of Robert’s work for the state insurance board, the family travelled frequently, living mainly in hotels for the first few years of Shelley’s life. They eventually settled in Houston, and Shelley enjoyed a close relationship with her mother Bobbie, who encouraged her daughter’s interest in storytelling. In the early 1960s, however, Bobbie started a job in real estate, leaving her teenage daughter to care for the three younger Duvall boys.
Shelley chafed against this duty and against the expectations of her father, a disciplinarian who believed that she should be content with a future as a housewife. At school she was conscientious but became sidetracked in adolescence, taking up with a boyfriend who drove a Mustang.
After graduating from Waltrip High School she studied science at South Texas Junior College, but dropped out when “somebody held a vivisected monkey in front of my face”. For a time she worked on the cosmetics counter of a department store, until her sales pitch caught the eye of three crew members working under Robert Altman.
They invited her to a casting call for Brewster McCloud (1970) and she landed the role of Suzanne, a heavily made-up Astrodome usher and the title character’s love interest.
Altman thought it his best work, with Shelley Duvall ideally suited to Suzanne’s off-kilter sense of whimsy. “[She] has given absolutely marvellous performances in four or five of my films,” he told Playboy in 1976. “I’m always amazed that other directors don’t pick up on her, but nobody has.”
Other directors did eventually take notice, and Shelley Duvall went on to work with Woody Allen in Annie Hall (1977) and Terry Gilliam in Time Bandits (1981). She started dating Paul Simon on the set of Annie Hall (he had a cameo as a record producer), moving with him to Los Angeles and establishing herself on the city’s party scene. But the move left her feeling lost and depressed, and it damaged her professional relationship with Altman, who had been intent on casting her for his next film, A Wedding (she was replaced by Pam Dawber).
Simon eventually broke up with her in the airport as she was leaving for England to start filming on The Shining. She arrived in a state of emotional rawness that left her ill-equipped for Kubrick’s work ethic, though it lent an edge of unfeigned hysteria to her performance as Wendy.
By contrast, filming Popeye (1980), Altman’s live-action adaptation of the cartoon, was “a real treat”. She had been nicknamed “Olive Oyl” at school on account of her lanky frame, and relished the chance to play a romantic lead. “Olive Oyl is 101 per cent woman,” she said. “I see her as a real femme fatale.” The film also marked the beginning of her friendship with Robin Williams, who joined her roster of stars on Faerie Tale Theatre.
By the early 1990s, however, Shelley Duvall had lost the rights to the television show. A follow-up, Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories (1992), earned her an Emmy nomination, and she continued to make occasional forays into acting – notably in Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady (1996) – but the general trajectory was one of decline. When an earthquake destroyed her home in Los Angeles she returned to her birthplace of Texas, and the media gradually lost interest in her movements.
In 2016 she made a dramatic reappearance on the Dr Phil show, hosted by the psychologist and talk-show veteran Phillip McGraw. The interview was widely condemned as exploitative, with Shelley Duvall coming across as incoherent and distressed. She spoke at length about her various physical ailments, claimed that her former co-star Robin Williams was not dead but “shape-shifting”, and expressed a fear that she would be harmed or even killed by an unknown assailant. After the interview aired, the Actors Fund confirmed that it would be offering her financial and emotional assistance.
Shelley Duvall married Bernard Sampson in 1970. The marriage was dissolved. In later years she was reported to be dating Dan Gilroy, a musician and former boyfriend of the singer Madonna.
Shelley Duvall, born July 7 1949, died July 11 2024
