CinemaShelley Duvall: trauma, legend and criticism behind the scenes of The ShiningThe truths and lies about the performance of the late Shelley Duvall behind the scenes of the horror classic ‘The Shining’, by Stanley Kubricktoday at 17:32

Thursday (11) dawned sad with the news of the actress’s death Shelley Duvallwho died in her sleep from complications related to diabetes. She was 75 years old.

“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend has left us,” she said. Dan Gilroyhis life partner, in a statement. “[Ela enfrentou] much suffering lately, now you are free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”

Duvall was one of the most celebrated and talented actresses of the seventies. The director Robert Altman launched her career by giving her one of the lead roles in his 1970 classic, Flying is with the Birds. He continued to work with her in the following years in Where Men Are Men, Thieves like us, Nashville It is Three women. Woody Allen gave her the opportunity to showcase her comedic talent in Woody Allen (1977), three years before she reunited with Altman to portray Olive Oyl alongside Robin Williams in Popeye.

But she made her biggest mark on pop culture just before Popeyewhen Stanley Kubrick cast her as Wendy Torrance in their adaptation of the horror novel by Stephen King, The illuminated. It was a long and grueling shoot where Duvall’s character was in a state of hysteria most of the time.

“Spending day after day in excruciating work was almost unbearable,” Duvall told Roger Ebert in December 1980. “The character of Jack Nicholson I had to be mad and angry all the time. And in my character, I had to cry 12 hours a day, every day, for nine months straight, five or six days a week. I filmed for a year and a month, and there must be something to the scream therapy, because after the day was over and I had cried for 12 hours…”

“After all that work, hardly anyone even criticized my performance, even to mention it. The criticism was all about Kubrick, it was as if I wasn’t there.”

One of the most notorious scenes comes about halfway through the film when she discovers that the novel her husband was working on is just “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” written over and over again. (This is a Kubrick invention that was not in King’s actual novel.) She is forced to defend herself with a baseball bat as he advances on her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Nicholson growls. “Wendy, darling, light of my life. I’m not going to hurt you. You didn’t let me finish my sentence. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to bash your brains in. I’m going to bash the shit out of them.”

According to Kubrick legend, this scene was filmed 127 times. And according to Duvall legend, Kubrick’s harsh treatment of her on the set — documented in Making ‘The Shining’in Vivian Kubrick — contributed to the mental health issues the actress experienced later in life. But Duvall has always insisted that this simply wasn’t true. Earlier this year, she told New York Times who had fond memories of eating McDonald’s with Kubrick and playing chess with him. She never blamed him for problems she experienced decades after filming, not even once.

She also said she was impressed with the finished film. “There were scenes that I didn’t watch being filmed,” she said. “You know that scene with the two little girls at the end of the hallway, and then they separate? And you see what’s behind them? That was scary, really scary.”

Many critics at the time were unimpressed with Duvall’s performance in the film. She was even nominated for Worst Actress in the Golden Raspberry inaugural in 1981, although Brooke Shields took home the dubious award for his role in The blue Lake. (John J.B. Wilson withdrew the nomination in 2022 after learning how Kubrick treated her on set.) And Stephen King famously didn’t like the film much either. “It’s so misogynistic,” he told Rolling Stone in 2014. “I mean, Wendy Torrance is just presented as a kind of noisy dishwasher.”

Most moviegoers today disagree with the 1980s film critics and King himself. The film is regarded as a horror masterpiece, and Duvall’s performance as Wendy Torrance is celebrated. Watch the taco scene one more time. Try to imagine going through that emotional torment 127 times. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Shelley Duvall, who’s best known for her role in The Shining, reveals why she disappeared from Hollywood and returns to acting, managing to do that.