There was a time when everyone knew Shelley Duvall’s distinctive appearance.
Director Robert Altman said she was “born to play” Olive Oyl in “Popeye” in the 1980s. And she was right as Jack Nicholson’s terrified wife, Wendy, in “The Shining” that same year.
But then Duvall disappeared, leaving Hollywood for his home state of Texas in the mid-1990s. And except for a traumatic visit to the show “Dr. Phil” in 2016, fans haven’t heard much about her lately.
Everything changed on Thursday, when The Hollywood Reporter published a new and extensive interview with the 71-year-old former private and reclusive actor. And one of the first things they plunged into was exactly what happened to Dr. Phil McGraw, when his show arrived to check on her.
“I found out what kind of person he is in the most difficult way,” Duvall said in the interview. “My mom also didn’t like him. Many people, like Dan (Gilroy, his partner), said, ‘You shouldn’t have done this, Shelley.’ “
What happened in 2016 was as follows: McGraw and his team arrived in the city and filmed an interview that THR characterized as “disturbing”. During that time, the article said, she “babbled free association nonsense and revealed paranoid fantasies”.
Lee Unkrich, who directed films like “Toy Story 3” and “Coco”, was watching that day and had been looking for Duvall for many years, and ended up looking for her to make sure she was okay. “Unfortunately, at ‘Dr. Phil’, the world saw what it is like to have an untreated mental illness,” he told THR.
Vivian Kubrick, daughter of director Stanley Kubrick (who directed “The Shining”) tweeted at the time that the footage was “shocking” and “shameful”.
(A spokesman for “Dr. Phil” said they wanted to “document the fight and bring incredible resources to change their trajectory”, but “she declined our initial offer of hospital treatment.”)
The article does not address her current mental condition, although it does indicate that she had mood swings with a “sharp” memory and full of “engaging” stories.
And she clearly has many of them. Having worked with the legendary director Altman on six films, Duvall also had a memorable participation in 1977’s “Annie Hall” and dated musician Paul Simon. She went to parties with future stars all over the place, including a carpenter who had just built a waterfall for the home of a studio executive. That carpenter was Harrison Ford.
“The Shining” was probably his most challenging role, however. Director Kubrick thought she was “great at crying,” as Duvall recalls, but the film was shot for 56 weeks. Kubrick was shooting six days a week, sometimes for 16 hours a day, and Duvall had to live in a state of constant anxiety and terror just to stay in character.
“(Kubrick) prints nothing until at least the 35th take,” she said. “After a while, your body rebels. He says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day. ‘ And sometimes just that thought made me cry. Waking up on a Monday morning, so early, and realizing that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled – I just started to cry. I said, ‘Oh no, I can’t, I can’t. ‘And yet I did. I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ “
One scene, in which Duvall’s character had to hit Nicholson’s character with a bat, took “three weeks” to shoot, she remembered, and cried when she remembered. “It was very difficult,” she said. “Jack was so good – so scary. I can only imagine how many women go through this kind of thing.”
That said, she had nothing but kind words for the late director Kubrick: “He was very warm and friendly to me,” she said.
Actress Angelica Huston, who was dating Nicholson and living with him during the shoot, said that “Shelly was having fun just dealing with the emotional content of the play … and they didn’t seem so friendly … She took over. She was , I think, incredibly brave. “
For a time, Duvall grew stronger and stronger; from 1982 to 1987 she produced and appeared in the “Faerie Tale Theater”, full of stars, and continued to perform. So, after recording “The Underneath” with Steven Soderbergh in 1994 in Austin, she decided not to return to Hollywood. She stayed in Texas, otherwise off the celebrity map, until she was found again by Dr. Phil’s producers.
Now, she appears to have a small group of friends and admirers (like Unkrich) who provide a support system. Fans attended a 70th birthday party in 2019 at Red Lobster, their favorite restaurant. And she may, perhaps, be willing to revisit some of her most difficult Hollywood moments in the future.
Including checking out “The Shining”.
“I would like to watch the movie again,” she said. “I haven’t seen this in a long time.”
