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LAST UPDATE | 11 Jul 2024
ACTOR SHELLEY DUVALL, who played Wendy Torrance in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick movie The Shining, has died aged 75.
Duvall died on Thursday in her sleep at her home in Blanco, Texas, her long-time partner Dan Gilroy announced.
The cause of death was complications from diabetes, said her friend, the publicist Gary Springer.
Dan Gilroy, her life partner since 1989, confirmed the news of her death to The Hollywood Reporter in the United States.
“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” Gilroy said.
Duvall was attending junior college in Texas when Altman’s crew members, preparing to film Brewster McCloud, encountered her at a party in Houston in 1970. They introduced her to the director, who cast her and made her his protege.
Duvall would go on to appear in Altman films including Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Popeye, Three Women and McCabe & Ms Miller.
“He offers me […] good roles,” Duvall told The New York Times in 1977.
“None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him. I remember the first advice he ever gave me: ‘Don’t take yourself seriously’.”
Duvall, gaunt and gawky, was no conventional Hollywood starlet. But she had a beguiling frank manner and exuded a singular naturalism. The film critic Pauline Kael called her the “female Buster Keaton”.
At her peak, Duvall was a regular star in some of the defining movies of the 1970s and 1980s. In The Shining, she played Wendy Torrance, who watches in horror as her husband, Jack (Jack Nicholson), goes crazy while their family is isolated in the Overlook Hotel.
It was Duvall’s screaming face that made up half of the film’s most famous image, along with Jack’s axe coming through the door.
But Duvall disappeared from movies almost as quickly as she arrived in them. By the 1990s, she began retiring from acting. Her last film role was in 2002’s Manna From Heaven.
Duvall retreated from public life. Earlier this year she gave her first interview in years.
“How would you feel if people were really nice, and then, suddenly, on a dime” — she snapped her fingers — “they turn on you?” Duvall told the Times.
“You would never believe it unless it happens to you. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s true.”
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And it’s long overdue for Cork to have a seat at the United Nations. And a permanent seat on the security council to be held by Roy Keane in perpetuity.
@Seán: we have the last spot to limerick. Senator Blindboy wouldn’t approve
US sticking it’s nose where is doesn’t belong agian. What a surprise
@Mark Duffy: you could indeed. But what business is of the US what China decides to do? Didn’t see China interfere with the US invasion of the middle East. Seems the US has decided it’s one rule for them and another for everyone else.
@Roy Dowling: look what the US tried and failed to do with Cuba LOL if it wasn’t for the bleededn communist Russians they would of had there where way, US backed forces were slaughtered during ‘bay of the pigs’ same way the US backed Chinese nationals fled to form modern day Taiwan after the Civil war
@Mark Duffy: has the US ever actually helped a nation in the name of democracy? And not because it has expansive natural resources ?name one?
@Mark Duffy: Tawain isn’t a sovereign nation weather you want to admit it or not. Just because they want to be doesn’t make it so. The US has no business getting involved in what is essentially an internal matter for the Chinese.
@Roy Dowling: China no longer has to lower itself to the US, they are on par with them if anything and could go head to head in war with them, it wasn’t possible 2 decades ago, now it is
@Damon16: with the state of the health service here in Ireland i won’t be here in 20yrs time
@Alan Peters: Japan and Germany. That’s 2.
@Jonathan Baum: they helped Japan after detonating an atomic bomb because they seen it as a base in their paranoia against communism
@Jonathan Baum: why doesnt the US have a history of helping out struggling African nations? Bar taking slaves, because the European colonies stripped them of their natural resources and its not worth their their time, the middle east is a different story they can get something out of there
@Mark Duffy: a nations right to self determination? So you agree Israel is a sovereign country? Can Scotland just leave the UK tomorrow because its decides it’s now independent.? Taiwan is part of China that’s just a fact. A losing side of a civil war who retreated to Taiwan can’t just decide its now independent.
@Mark Duffy: Republic of Ireland isn’t part of the Uk.
@Mark Duffy: doesn’t matter if they decided it now or 40 years ago. You can’t just claim to be independent. Just like Scotland can’t it needs to hold a vote and the UK has to agree to let them have a vote otherwise there not legally independent.
@Donal McCarthy: Didn’t say they to submit to Chinese rule because of the Americans. I Said the Americans have no right to interfere big difference. You say Taiwan has a right to self determination. Does Israel not have the same right to self determination?
@Roy Dowling: well spotted ;)
@Alan Peters: the Marshall plan rebuilt the whole of western Europe after the war.
Its all geopolitics… Divide and conquer. The UK split Ireland in 2. They did the same with India and Pakistan. If you look at the middle east they did the very same with Syria, Iraq and Turkey with the Kurdish people. The west was also involved in splitting North Korea and South Korea, North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Taiwan is something similar, its a massive security risk for China. The UK and the US are sending war ships into Taiwan stirring tensions and its not by accident.
Can you imagine the outrage if Ireland became best friends with China and Russia and we invited ships with lots of weapons to dock in Dublin and Wexford and they pointed their shiny new weapons at London. I don’t think the UK would be too happy.
@Jonathan Baum: By the ‘world’ you mean the USA and the rump colonial powers of western Europe. The ‘world’ is happy to trade with China.
Biggest mistake was Nixon ever establishing diplomatic relations with China. One they did it, other followed suit . Lithuania has guts.
Taiwan is China. Falklands is Argentina.
have your say