Shelley Duvall Dies: ‘The Shining Star’ Was 75

Shelley Duvall has died at the age of 75.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actress died in her sleep due to complications from diabetes on Thursday (July 11). She was at her home in Blanco, Texas, at the time.

Her partner, Dan Gilroy, confirmed the news to the publication, saying in a statement, “My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”

Duvall was perhaps best known for her iconic role as Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. She was also known for her role as Olive Oyl in Popeye, Pansy in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, and as the narrator and host of the Faerie Tale Theatre children’s show, for which she received a Peabody Award.

She was discovered by director Robert Altman, who cast her in Brewster McCloud in 1970 and continued to work with him on six subsequent films, including Nashville and 3 Women. Her turn in 3 Women won her several Best Actress awards, including the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. She was twice nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards for her children’s programs Tall Tales & Legends and Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories.

She was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Women Film Critics Circle Awards and was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in 2020.

The actress retired in 2002 but returned for an independent horror film, The Forest Hills.

Though she was largely absent from the public spotlight after her decision to retire from the entertainment industry, she sat for a 2016 interview with Phil McGraw on his daytime talk show Dr. Phil, and the interviewer was roundly criticized for appearing to be exploiting the actress in a time of an apparent mental health crisis.

In 2021, THR‘s Seth Abramovitch interviewed her at her home and found her to be “sharp.” Duvall revealed of her famously taxing experience on the set of The Shining, in which she was required to complete exhausting takes dozens of times in a row, that the bat scene still made her cry: “We filmed that for about three weeks. Every day. It was very hard. Jack [Nicholson] was so good — so d*** scary. I can only imagine how many women go through this kind of thing.”