One of the most recognizable faces in cinema, but also one of the most forgotten.
Shelley Duvall didn't make her screen debut with Kubrick as Wendy Torrance in 'The Shining', she had previously won best actress recognition at Cannes for 'Three Women' (1977), and even made a brief appearance as Woody Allen quote in 'Annie Hall', but it is undoubtedly the director's tape that catapulted her to success. And also the one that destroyed it. What has happened to her during all these decades withdrawn from the spotlight? What happened on that shoot? At 71 years old and withdrawn from her in a Texas town, she has responded to these questions in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter she dignifies her image after years of harsh media attacks on the state of her mental health.
"Waking up and realizing that you had to cry all day, I don't know how I did it," he tells about that filming with Stanley Kubrick in 1980. The mistreatment received by the director on set has been vox popular for years. He made no one on the crew speak to her during the entire shoot so she felt really isolated and had her shoot each scene a minimum of 35 times. "[Kubrick] doesn't call anything good until at least take 35. Thirty-five takes, running and crying and carrying a child, becomes difficult. And to do the whole performance from the first rehearsal. That's difficult," he says. Duvall to journalist Seth Abramovitch.
After that, the actress says that she suffered from depression. Added to that depressive state was a series of professional setbacks. To top it off, the role of Wendy Torrance earned her the Razzie for Worst Actress. After that, in the same year, critics were primed with the film version of 'Popeye' filmed by Robert Alman and in which Shelley played Olivia due to her unquestionable physical resemblance. Even though "The Shining" and her work on it have been vindicated over time, the story that Duvall lived through then was very different.
After several stumbles before the screen, she went to the other side. Finally, the actress chose to put acting aside and go behind the cameras as a producer and screenwriter, specializing in children's productions in the mid-80s or early 90s, such as 'Great Tales and Legends' or 'Bedtime Stories from Shelley Duvall', which she combined with very brief and sporadic appearances in some independent films.
The earthquake that affected her home in California in 1994 seems to be the trigger for the actress and her partner since the late 80s, musician Dan Gilroy, who decided to leave Hollywood completely and move to Texas. She was fleeing, according to her account in the interview, from all the bureaucratic difficulties that this caused her.
The journalist also points out that due to financial problems and an escape from the rumors that during those years pointed to the actress suffering from delusions due to her state of mental health. According to what her neighbors told various media at the time, Duvall would be on the street every night, inside her car, trying to communicate with the Martians.
Her disappearance from the public eye and rumors about her deterioration was fueled in 2016 with an appearance by her on Phil McGraw's show, 'Dr. Phil', a former collaborator of Oprah Winfrey. The actress appeared visibly upset and admitted to being ill while she assured the actor Robin Williams was still alive and assured that the Nottingham sheriff wanted to kill her.
This earned the presenter harsh criticism for taking advantage of her delicate state of health. Another setback in the media from which the actress protected herself with the support of her partner, Dan Gilroy, who did not want to participate in the interview with The Hollywood Reporter either.
But in February of this 2021, with the interview conducted by Abramovitch, Duvall made up for that by taking the reins of his own story again, denouncing the difficulties of that filming, the ordeal he went through, and praising the cherry pie from a bar on the highway of her town and that she eats from her white truck to the top of the junk while doing the interview, as described by the journalist who visits her in Texas. After their conversation, he describes "I wasn't sure what I'd find when I got there. I just knew it wasn't right that McGraw's callous sideshow was the last word [for Duvall's] legacy. His mood ebbed and flowed throughout the day, but, like Unkrich, I found his memory sharp and his stories fascinating."
