July 11 (UPI) — Actress Shelley Duvall, best known for her role in The Shining, died Thursday in Texas. She was 75.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us,” her partner Dan Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”
She died of diabetes complications, Gilroy said.
Duvall got her start in acting after being discovered by director Robert Altman while she was in junior college, reports say.
That mentorship led Duvall to take on roles such as Olive Oyl in Altman’s 1980 feature Popeye, a live-action film starring Robin Williams. Their other collaborations include McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, and Nashville.
“[Altman] has great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me,” Duvall previously told The New York Times. “And he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him.”
Also released in 1980 was The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Duvall and Jack Nicholson. Duvall was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Wendy Torrance in the film, a role that required her to cry for hours a day.
“You just think about something very sad in your life or how much you miss your family or friends,” she told People in 1981. “But 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… And yet I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack [Nicholson] said that to me, too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.'”
Duvall’s other film credits include Annie Hall and 3 Women, the latter of which earned her best actress at the Cannes Film Festival. She most recently had a role in the 2023 film The Forest Hills.
Beyond acting, Duvall founded her own production company, Think Entertainment, in the late 1980s. She also briefly dated Paul Simon.
