With large expressive eyes and a big, slightly bucktoothed smile, she was few people’s idea of a conventionally beautiful Hollywood star. But Shelley Duvall, who died on July 11 at the age of 75, enjoyed a hugely successful career in film, and later as a producer of children’s television. For many of us she is best remembered for her starring role in Stanley Kubrick’s legendary horror film, The Shining (1980).
For the role of Wendy, the emotionally oppressed wife of the increasingly unstable writer Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, Duvall was Kubrick’s only serious consideration. He had seen all her films and greatly admired her work, but was convinced of her fit for the part after seeing her in Robert Altman’s strange and hypnotic dream film, 3 Women (1977).
Kubrick saw Duvall as perfectly embodying the kind of woman who remains married to a man like Jack Torrance – even though she knows he has brutally assaulted their son. The director understood that he couldn’t have someone ballsy like Jane Fonda playing the part, saying: “You need someone who is mousy and vulnerable.”
