Hollywood star Shelley Duval, best known for her role as Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” died Tuesday at the age 75 of complications from diabetes.
Duval had been suffering from a number of illness for years.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” her longtime partner Dan Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter.
Her shocking last media appearance on Dr. Phil’s television show in 2016, where she claimed that former co-star Robin Williams was still alive as a shapeshifter and was being tormented by the fictional Sheriff of Nottingham, was universally panned as exploitation.
“I am very sick. I need help,” she said at the time.
During her career, Duvall starred in seven films under mentor Robert Altman, starting with Brewster McCloud in 1970.
According to The Hollywood Reporter —
In between, the childlike star collaborated with Altman as a mail-order bride in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971); as the woman who has a Mississippi romance with bank robber Keith Carradine in Thieves Like Us (1974); as the groupie L.A. Joan, fond of hot pants and platform shoes, in Nashville (1975); as the wife of President Grover Cleveland in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976); and as Millie Lamoureaux, a fantasizing attendant at a Palm Springs health spa for the elderly, in 3 Women (1977).
After staring in the blockbuster comedy Popeye, Duvall became a producer of children’s shows under her production company Think Entertainment.