go through Ian Youngs, cultural reporter
American actress Shelly Duvall, known for films such as “The Shining,” “Annie Hall” and “Nashville,” has died at the age of 75.
her partner dan gilroy confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend has left us. She has been through so much lately and now she is free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” he said, according to the outlet.
Gilroy said she died of complications from diabetes at her home in Texas.
Duvall’s other credits include the 1977 drama 3 Women, directed by Robert Altman, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award and was nominated for a BAFTA Award .
Three years later, she played Olive Oyl in Ultraman’s musical “Popeye” opposite Robin Williams.
But Duvall fell out of favor in Hollywood and disappeared from the screen for two decades until returning in 2023’s “Forest Hills.”
With his large brown eyes and offbeat charm, Duvall is a unique and compelling presence.
Her career and collaboration with Altman began in the 1970 black comedy “Brewster MacLeod”, and the two reunited in 1971 in “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.”
After she played a woman bewitched by a 1930s bank robber in their next film, Thieves Like Us, Altman told her: “I know you’re great, but I don’t Know you are awesome.
She said this sentence was “the reason why I persisted and became an actress.”
The director was supportive of her, once saying that she “can swing in every direction: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic, even beautiful.”
In 1975, Altman cast her again in Nashville, a satire on American society, politics, and country music.
Their next collaboration was “3 Women,” in which Duvall plays a chatty, trend-conscious health spa attendant. Anne Bilson of The Guardian rated it Her best role, “simply one of the greatest performances of the 1970s.”
Meanwhile, also in 1977, Duvall impressed in “Annie Hall” as Pam, a Rolling Stone reporter who dates Woody Allen’s Alvy.
She is probably best known for her role as Wendy, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s creepy hotel manager in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining.
Shooting was an ordeal. “I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day, for nine months, five or six days a week,” she once recalled.
Duvall’s film roles since then include Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” and Steve Martin’s “Roxanne.”
She also formed her own production company and produced and hosted the beloved 1980s children’s TV show Elf’s Tale Theatre.
Her acting roles dwindled in the 1990s, with Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady being a top choice, and she faded from the spotlight in 2002 sight.
The New York Times blamed her disappearance on the stress of the 1994 earthquake that destroyed her Los Angeles home and her brother’s cancer.
Talking about her long absence from the screen, she told the newspaper In May, she fell victim to the vagaries of the film industry. “I’m a star. I play the lead. People think it’s just aging, but it’s not. It’s violence,” she said.
Asked to explain, she said: “How would you feel if people were really nice and all of a sudden they turned on you?
“Unless it happens to you, you never believe it. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s real.”
“The ultimate movie star”
Concerns were raised about her health in 2016 when she appeared on the TV talk show “Dr. Phil” and told him: “I’m very sick. I need help.”
The newspaper said she also spoke about the messages she received after the death of “shapeshifting” Robin Williams and spoke about malicious forces who wanted to harm her.
Speaking about that period, Gilroy told The New York Times that she became “paranoid, a little delusional.”
When asked by the newspaper why she agreed to return to the screen in “Forest Hills,” she replied: “I wanted to act again. And then this guy kept calling, so I ended up doing it.”
Novelist Nicole Flattery writes in the Financial Times Her return in 2023 shows her magic is intact.
In an article calling her “the ultimate movie star,” Flattery summed up her talent, writing: “She is a master of playing characters who appear happy when they are sad, their silliness belying depth.”