Shelley Duvall, the actress best known for starring in Robert Altman’s “Nashville” and “3 Women,” and in Stanley Kubrick’s horror opus “The Shining,” has died, her partner Dan Gilroy told ABC News. She was 75.
“Shelley loved animals, especially birds, now she’s free to fly,” Gilroy said. “She’s been suffering for many months, as much as I miss her, my life partner for 34 years, I’m glad she’s not suffering anymore.”
A cause of death was not immediately shared.
Duvall won a Cannes best actress award for her role in “3 Women” and later won a Peabody for producing and hosting the children’s anthology series “Faerie Tale Theatre.”
Born in Texas in 1949, Duvall was a regular figure in the films of Robert Altman, having appeared in seven of the director’s films, beginning with 1970’s “Brewster McCloud” — her first film role — and most famously in 1975’s “Nashville” and 1977’s “3 Women.”
Duvall’s last film with Altman was 1980’s “Popeye,” in which she played Olive Oyl, the girlfriend of Robin Williams’ titular character.
She also appeared alongside Diane Keaton in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” in 1977.
Duvall was probably best known to audiences for her role in Kubrick’s “The Shining.” In the 1980 Stephen King adaptation, Duvall played Wendy Torrance, a housewife fending off her unstable husband — played by Jack Nicholson — in a haunted hotel in the Rocky Mountains. The movie endeared Duvall to horror fans, although she later expressed mixed feelings about the difficulties in filming the movie under Kubrick’s famously iron-fisted direction.
Some of Duvall’s other film roles included Tim Burton’s 1984 short film “Frankenweenie,” the Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah rom-com “Roxanne” in 1987, Jane Campion’s 1996 film “The Portrait of a Lady” and as Hilary Duff’s witchy aunt in 1998’s “Casper Meets Wendy.”
Duvall hosted several anthology television series, including “Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre” in the ’80s and “Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories” in the ’90s, the latter of which earned her an Emmy nomination.
Beginning in the early aughts, Duvall largely remained out of the public eye while living in her home state of Texas. The actress had been open about her struggles with mental illness in recent years.
