SHE will for ever be remembered as the baseball bat-wielding Wendy Torrance, defending herself from a crazed, axe-swinging Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
It was something Shelley Duvall never forgot either, as the terrifying scene was filmed 127 times by the perfectionist director — causing her to cry for “12 hours a day for weeks on end”.
The actress died yesterday aged 75 at her home in Blanco, Texas, from complications with her diabetes.
The star, who never lost her innocent, childlike looks, was discovered by director Robert Altman when she screen-tested for a teenage seductress and tour guide in 1970’s Brewster McCloud.
More than ten years later, he cast her again, as Olive Oyl in Popeye, opposite Robin Williams.
The director/actress partnership continued with 1971’s McCabe & Mrs Miller, where she played a mail-order bride, 1975’s Nashville, as a groupie, and 1977’s 3 Women, where she starred as a health spa attendant for the elderly.
Altman once noted that Shelley was “able to swing all sides of the pendulum: Charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic, even beautiful”.
Asked why she found the director so enticing to work with, she said in 1977: “He has great confidence in me and a trust and respect for me.
“He doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me. I love him.”
The same could not be said for her relationship with Kubrick, who she found near impossible to work with on a 13-month shoot for his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining.
Frequently arguing on set about the constant script changes, she claimed to have been so overwhelmed that she became physically ill for months.
At one point she was under so much stress that her hair began to fall out.
In a 1981 interview, she said: “I will never give that much again.
“If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead. But not with me.”
And she told US film critic Roger Ebert: “Going through day after day of excruciating work was almost unbearable.
I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight.
“Jack Nicholson’s character had to be crazy and angry all the time.
“And in my character, I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week.
“I was there a year and a month.
“After all that work, hardly anyone even criticised my performance in it, even to mention it, it seemed like.
“The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn’t there.”
But it was her raw talent and intriguing looks that got her noticed by so many directors.
Roger Ebert wrote that Duvall “looks and sounds like almost nobody else.
“In all of her roles, there is an openness about her, as if somehow nothing has come between her open face and our eyes — no camera, dialogue, make-up, method of acting — and she is just spontaneously being the character”.
She took a break from big screen performances for nearly two decades after her traumatic turn as Wendy Torrance, but hit the headlines when she made an appearance on self-help talk show Dr Phil in 2016.
Looking dishevelled, the actress revealed she was suffering with a mental illness, saying: “I am very sick. I need help.”
During the distressing appearance, Shelley also said she believed her Popeye co-star Robin Williams was not dead and instead was a “shape-shifter”.
Shelley, who had never been outside Texas before, became an unlikely actress.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 7, 1949, Shelley was the oldest of four children.
She had three younger brothers, Scott, Stewart and Shane.
Her parents, Bob, a cattle auctioneer turned attorney, and her mother, Bobbie, an estate agent, took the family to Houston, Texas, when she was five.
At college she was bookish and studied nutrition and science.
Shelley met members of Altman’s staff when she threw a party for her fiancé, artist Bernard Sampson — who she went on to marry in 1970 — and her life changed for ever.
Altman offered her a role and Shelley, who had never been outside Texas before, became an unlikely actress.
Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, she and Bernard divorced in 1974.
Shelley then dated musician Paul Simon, who she met when they both starred in 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall.
But he dumped her just before she was about to board a flight to London to work on The Shining.
And he revealed that he was leaving her for her friend, the Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher.
A heartbroken Duvall — who, in the late 1970s, also briefly dated Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, with whom she shared a birthday — admitted to crying during the entire flight.
She met her long-term partner, Dan Gilroy, in 1989, when they co-starred in Disney Channel movie Mother Goose Rock ‘N’ Rhyme.
In a Hollywood Reporter piece three years ago, a reclusive Shelley was described as enjoying the tranquil banks of the river in Texas Hill Country.
The article continued that she “often passes entire days in her car, chatting with locals and snacking on takeout food”.
Yesterday, Dan, her love of the last 35 years, said: “My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us.
“Too much suffering lately, now she’s free.
“Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”
