Shelley Duvall

Duvall in Los Angeles, 1975.

Around 1970, she met Robert Altman at a party while he was shooting Brewster McCloud (1970) on location in Texas.[3] Several crew members for the film were fascinated by Duvall's upbeat presence and unique physical appearance, and asked her to be part of the feature.[3] 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."[1] Duvall had never left Texas before Altman offered her the film role. She flew to Hollywood and subsequently appeared as the free-spirited love interest to Bud Cort's reclusive Brewster in Brewster McCloud.[1][8]

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). Next, 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).[9] She also hosted an evening of Saturday Night Live and appeared in 5 sketches: "Programming Change", "Video Vixens", "Night of the Moonies", "Van Arguments" and "Goodnights".[10]

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, among her other cast members, had improvised many of her lines.[11] In spite of the film not being a major box-office success, it received critical acclaim,[12] 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.[13] She next appeared in a minor role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977).

Duvall in 1977

Duvall's next role was 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. In order to give The Shining the psychological horror it needed, Kubrick antagonized his actors, and Kubrick and Duvall argued frequently. Kubrick intentionally isolated Duvall, and she was forced to perform the exhausting baseball bat scene 127 times. Afterwards, Duvall presented Kubrick with clumps of hair that had fallen out due to the extreme stress of filming.[14] 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."[15] Reception of Duvall's performance in the film has been mixed; initially, it was critically panned, earning Duvall a Golden Raspberry nomination, however in more recent years she has received praise for it, as Vulture Magazine 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."[16]

When 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 critical and commercial success,[17][18] and Duvall was praised for her performance. The 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."[19]

Her 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.[20] 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 starred Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Cindy Hall and Sissy Spacek.[21] 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.[22] Next, Duvall appeared 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.[23] Unlike the previous two series, Nightmare Classics was aimed at a teenage and adult audience.[23] It was the least successful series that Duvall produced for Showtime and ran for only four episodes.[23]

Duvall in 1990

In 1991, Duvall portrayed Jenny Wilcox, wife of Charlie Wilcox (Christopher Lloyd) in the Hulk Hogan action-adventure film Suburban Commando.[24] 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.[25][26]

The following year, Think Entertainment joined the newly formed Universal Family Entertainment to create Duvall's fourth Showtime original series, Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories,[27] 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. Duvall's production work gained her six CableACE Awards and one Peabody Award. 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.[28]

Duvall 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 mother in the comedy Home Fries and Hilary Duff'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 roles in Tale of the Mummy (1998), co-starring Christopher Lee and Gerard Butler,[29] and The 4th Floor (1999), co-starring Juliette Lewis.[30]

In the 2000s, Duvall accepted minor roles, including the mother of Matthew Lawrence's character in the horror-comedy Boltneck (2000) and Haylie Duff's aunt in the independent family film Dreams in the Attic, which was sold to the Disney Channel but was never released.[31] 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.