Shelley Duvall

Around 1970, she met Robert Altman at a party while he was shooting Brewster McCloud (1970) on location in Texas. Several crew members on the film were fascinated by Duvall's upbeat presence and unique physical appearance, and asked her to be part of the feature.[4] Duvall reflected on committing to the project: "I got tired of arguing, and thought maybe I am an actress. They told me to come. I simply got on a plane and did it. I was swept away."[2] Duvall had never left Texas before Altman offered her a role. She flew to Hollywood and subsequently appeared in the film as the free-spirited love interest to Bud Cort's reclusive Brewster.[2][9]

Duvall alongside Keith Carradine in Nashville (1975)

Altman subsequently chose Duvall for roles as an unsatisfied mail-order bride in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and the daughter of a convict and mistress to Keith Carradine's character in Thieves Like Us (1974). Duvall appeared as a spaced-out groupie in Altman's ensemble comedy Nashville (1975), which was a critical and commercial success, and a sympathetic Wild West woman in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976). The same year, Duvall left Altman to star as Bernice, a wealthy girl from Wisconsin in PBS's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976).[10] She also hosted an evening of Saturday Night Live and appeared in five sketches: "Programming Change", "Video Vixens", "Night of the Moonies", "Van Arguments" and "Goodnights".[11]

In 1977, Duvall starred as Mildred "Millie" Lammoreaux in Robert Altman's psychological thriller 3 Women, portraying a woman living in a dreary California desert town. Although there was a written screenplay, Duvall, like other cast members, improvised many of her lines.[12] In spite of the film not being a major box-office success, it received critical acclaim,[13] and Duvall's performance was lauded by critics. Texas Monthly critics Marie Brenner and Jesse Kornbluth praised Duvall for giving an "extraordinary performance". Her performance garnered the award for Best Actress at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival and the LAFCA Award for Best Actress, as well as a BAFTA nomination.[14] She next appeared in a minor role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).

Duvall in Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1977)

Duvall's next role was that of Wendy Torrance in The Shining (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick. Jack Nicholson states in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures that Kubrick was great to work with but that he was "a different director" with Duvall. Because of Kubrick's methodical nature, principal photography took a year to complete. The film's script was changed so often that Nicholson stopped reading each draft. Kubrick antagonized his actors, and Kubrick and Duvall argued frequently. Kubrick intentionally isolated Duvall, and went through exhausting shoots, such as the baseball bat scene, which she had performed 127 times.[15] Afterwards, Duvall presented Kubrick with clumps of hair that had fallen out due to the extreme stress of filming.[16] In an interview with Roger Ebert, she said making the film was "Almost unbearable. But from other points of view, really very nice, I suppose."[17]

Reception of Duvall's performance in The Shining was initially negative, earning the actress a Golden Raspberry nomination, however in retrospect she received widespread acclaim for her portrayal, and Maureen Murphy, co-founder of the Golden Raspberries, stated that she regretted giving Duvall a nomination.[18][19] On March 31, 2022, the Razzie committee officially rescinded Duvall's nomination, stating "We have since discovered that Duvall's performance was impacted by Stanley Kubrick's treatment of her throughout the production."[20] The retraction of the nomination was in response to public backlash The Razzies received after refusing to retract Bruce Willis's win for "Worst Bruce Willis Performance in a 2021 Movie", a one-off award for his roles in eight films released that calendar year.[21] Willis's family announced the star's retirement after being diagnosed with aphasia, a cognitive brain condition, on March 30, 2022.[22] The Razzie committee retracted both Willis's win and Duvall's nomination the following day.[20] On Duvall's performance, Vulture wrote in 2019: "looking into Duvall's huge eyes from the front row of a theater, I found myself riveted by a very poignant form of fear. Not the fear of an actor out of her element, or the more mundane fear of a victim being chased around by an ax-wielding maniac. Rather, it was something far more disquieting, and familiar: the fear of a wife who's experienced her husband at his worst, and is terrified that she'll experience it again."[23] Media site Screen Rant described her acting as her "best" career performance, and calling her "the heart of the film; she is out of her depth in dealing with her husband's looming insanity while trying to protect her young son, all while being fearful of the malevolence around her."[24]

While Duvall was in London shooting The Shining, Robert Altman cast her to portray Olive Oyl in his big-screen adaptation of Popeye, opposite Robin Williams. The film was a commercial success, but it received negative reviews. However, Duvall was praised for her performance. The film has been positively re-evaluated in the decades since its release.[25][26] Film critic Roger Ebert stated that it was a role she was "born to play": "Shelley Duvall is like a precious piece of china with a tinkling personality. She looks and sounds like almost nobody else, and if it is true that she was born to play the character Olive Oyl (and does so in Altman's new musical Popeye), it is also true that she has possibly played more really different kinds of characters than almost any other young actress of the 1970s."[27]

Duvall's role of Pansy in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981) followed. Shortly before the release of the film, it was reported that Duvall and actor Stanley Wilson (who portrayed the town barber in Popeye) were set to marry. However, no further reports were released regarding this.[28] In 1982, Duvall narrated, hosted and was executive producer of the children's television program Faerie Tale Theatre. She starred in seven episodes of the series; "Rumpelstiltskin" (1982), "Rapunzel" (1983), "The Nightingale" (1983), "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1984), "Puss in Boots" (1985), and "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp" (1986). Since the program's first episode "The Frog Prince", which starred Robin Williams and Teri Garr, Duvall produced 27 hour-long episodes of the program. In 1985, she created Tall Tales & Legends, another one-hour anthology series for Showtime, which featured adaptations of American folk tales. As with Faerie Tale Theatre, the series starred well-known Hollywood actors with Duvall as host, executive producer, and occasional guest star. The series ran for nine episodes and garnered Duvall an Emmy nomination.

While Duvall was producing Faerie Tale Theatre, it was reported that she was to star as the lead in the film adaptation of Tom Robbins’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was to star Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Cindy Hall and Sissy Spacek.[29] The project was delayed and when finally released in 1993, starred an entirely different cast. She also landed roles in films and television series: the mother of a boy whose dog is struck by car in Tim Burton's short film Frankenweenie (1984), and as Laura Burroughs in Booker (also 1984), a biographical television short based on the life of Booker T. Washington, directed by Stan Lathan.[30] Next, Duvall appeared as a lonely and timid woman who receives a message from a flying saucer in The Twilight Zone episode "The Once and Future King/A Saucer of Loneliness", and the friend of Steve Martin's character in the comedy Roxanne (1987).

In 1988, Duvall founded a new production company called Think Entertainment to develop programs and television movies for cable channels. She created Nightmare Classics (1989), a third Showtime anthology series that featured adaptations of well-known horror stories by authors including Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike the previous two series, Nightmare Classics was aimed at a teenage and adult audience. It was the least successful series that Duvall produced for Showtime and ran for only four episodes.[31] In 1991, Duvall portrayed Jenny Wilcox, the wife of Charlie Wilcox (Christopher Lloyd) in the Hulk Hogan action-adventure film Suburban Commando.[32] In October that year, Duvall released two compact discs, Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall... Sweet Dreams that features Duvall singing lullaby songs and Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall... Merry Christmas, on which Duvall sings Christmas songs.[33][34] A year later, Duvall landed a guest spot on the television series L.A. Law as Margo Stanton, a show dog owner and breeder who presses charges against the owner of a Welsh Corgi that mated with her prize-winning Afghan Hound.[35] In 1990 she played Little Bo Peep in Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme.

In 1992, Think Entertainment joined the newly formed Universal Family Entertainment to create Duvall's fourth Showtime original series, Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories,[36] which featured animated adaptations of children's storybooks with celebrity narrators and garnered her a second Emmy nomination. Duvall produced a fifth series for Showtime, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, before selling Think Entertainment in 1993 and retiring as a producer. She subsequently appeared as the vain, over-friendly, but harmless Countess Gemini—sister to the calculating Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich)—in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of the Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady. A year later, she played a beatific nun in the comedy film Changing Habits and a besotted, murderous, ostrich-farm owner in Guy Maddin's fourth feature Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. The same year she played Chris Cooper's character's gullible wife who yearns for a better life in Horton Foote's made-for-television film, Alone.

Duvall continued to make film and television appearances throughout the late-1990s. In 1998, she played Drew Barrymore's character's mother in the comedy Home Fries and Hilary Duff's character's aunt in the direct-to-video children's film Casper Meets Wendy. Near the end of the decade, she returned to the horror genre with a minor role in Tale of the Mummy (1998), co-starring Christopher Lee and Gerard Butler,[37] and The 4th Floor (1999), co-starring Juliette Lewis.[38] In the 2000s, Duvall accepted minor roles, including as the mother of Matthew Lawrence's character in the horror-comedy Boltneck (2000) and as Haylie Duff's aunt in the independent family film Dreams in the Attic, which was sold to the Disney Channel but was never released.[39] Her most recent acting appearance was a small role in the 2002 independent film Manna from Heaven. Duvall has lived out of public view since her retirement in 2002.