The star’s partner, Dan Gilroy, said she died of complications from diabetes on Thursday, July 11, 2024, at her home in Blanco, Texas
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” he said.
Duvall’s other credits included 1977 drama 3 Women, directed by Robert Altman, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actress award and was nominated for a BAFTA.
In 1977, Duvall played in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, and later starred as Olive Oyl in Altman’s Popeye alongside Robin Williams in 1980. She was then cast by Stanley Kubrick as Wendy Torrance, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance in The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel.
The Shining, which required 13 months of shooting, was a trying time for Duvall, as Kubrick pushed the actress to the point of bullying. Kubrick had her “crying 12 hours a day for weeks on end,” she said in a 1981 interview with People magazine. “I will never give that much again. If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me.”
One particular scene, the iconic baseball bat sequence, required her to do 127 takes. It made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most takes of a scene with dialogue.
Among her other roles were Terry Gilliam ’s Time Bandits and the comedy Roxanne with Steve Martin. Duvall appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s The Underneath in 1995 and the next year starred in Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady.
But Duvall fell out of favour in Hollywood and was off screens for two decades, before making her comeback in 2023’s The Forest Hills.
During the 1980s, Duvall produced a series of children’s anthology shows based on classic stories. These shows were directed by the likes of Tim Burton and Francis Ford Coppola, with guest stars like Robin Williams, Jamie Lee Curtis, Laura Dern, and Molly Ringwald.
She is survived by her partner Dan Gilroy.
