Shelley Duvall, the actress who captivated moviegoers in Robert Altman classics and brought wide-eyed terror to Stanley Kubrick's The Shiningdied at the age of 75.
Duvall's life partner Dan Gilroy confirmed the actress' death at the hollywoodreporteradding that she died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at their home in Blanco, Texas, where Duvall moved to after leaving Hollywood in the mid-Nineties.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she's free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” Gilroy said in a statement.
The Fort Worth, Texas-born Duvall stumbled into a movie career in 1970 when she met director Robert Altman while he was shooting Brewster McCloud in the Lone Star State; he subsequently cast Duvall in the supporting role of an Astrodome tour guide. That black comedy began a long-running collaboration between director and actress, with Duvall appearing in seven of Altman's films over the next decade.
Following Brewster McCloudDuvall next co-starred in the filmmaker's 1971 Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller1974's Thieves Like Us1975's country music epic Nashville1976's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's Historyand one of the owners 3 Women in that 1977 psychological drama. That same year, Duvall made her first appearance in a non-Altman film, popping up in Woody Allen's Annie Hall.
Three years later, however, Duvall would land her most enduring role, co-starring alongside Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shiningwhere she played tormented (both on-screen and off-camera) wife Wendy Torrance in the Stephen King adaptation.
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