The Singular Shelley Duvall

Some actors are singular. Not just in talent or appearance, but there’s this something other that leaves you with not a single comparable. You could compare Hardy, Penn, Pacino, and DeNiro to Brando. You could compare Blanchett to Streep or Hepburn. But for whatever it’s worth, there is no one you can compare to Shelley Duvall. She was the other. 

While she hailed from Texas she seemed more like the woman who fell to earth. There was a  detachment about her that wasn’t so much distancing, but otherworldly. She was both strange looking and stunningly beautiful. She had a long slender face that matched perfectly with her slim build. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and her front teeth were prominent in such a way that when one gazed upon her in full, she looked a bit like an alien who somehow opened her mouth and a southwestern accent flowed out.

Which leads me to that airy voice, so light and fluffy you’d swear it could produce cotton candy. There was nothing normal about Shelley Duvall. She seemed to exist on some other astral plane. 

And yet she could slide into a movie so perfectly that all that was unnatural about her (which is to say everything) became part of the landscape. It’s no surprise that a director as eccentric as Robert Altman would take note of her unique gifts (that were too often referred to as “kooky” or “quirky” as if she were a prop comic or a cartoon character) and for a decade, she became Altman’s unlikely muse. 

Starting in 1970, Duvall appeared in seven Altman films beginning with Brewster McCloud and ending with Popeye in 1980. She also had a wonderful cameo in Woody Allen’s classic comedy Annie Hall where she delivered maybe the funniest line of a very funny movie when she says to Allen, ““Sex with you is really a Kafakesque experience.”

In that glorious decade of her peak, she appeared in four of Altman’s greatest films: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, and 3 Women. Just by happenstance, I rewatched the latter a few months ago. 3 Women is sort of Altman’s dreamy rustic take on Bergman’s Persona. Duvall and co-star Sissy Spacek play two spa attendants who become roommates, and over time their personalities begin to merge. It’s one of those films where some might think not much is happening, but the slow moving tide of the film adds up to so much more than any single scene would lead you to believe. It’s an unclassifiable film that I suppose most would call a psychological drama, but there’s a mundane sort of creepiness to it that works on your mind. One could imagine Brian DePalma directing the film and turning it into one of his graphic Hitchcockian thrillers. But no, 3 Women just sort of seeps into your skin and takes up residence there. 

Of course, Spacek is one of the finest actors of her generation, but it’s the opacity of Duvall, the inability to put a finger on exactly what she’s doing with her performance that truly transfixes. While Duvall never received an Oscar nomination, she did receive a BAFTA nod for 3 Women and won best actress at Cannes. 

Duvall rounded out the decade by appearing in Altman’s perplexing adaptation of the comic strip character Popeye (with Robin Williams in the lead) and Duvall as Olive Oyl. I’ve seen Popeye three times and I’ve never been able to make sense of how Altman’s style (and particularly his use of overlapping dialogue) could ever be seen as a match for the material, but to say that Duvall was perfectly cast is to traffic in understatement. It’s as if she fell right off the funny pages and sprang to life. In a film where I can’t tell if much of anything is working (mind you, I don’t think Popeye is so much “bad” as inscrutable), Duvall steals every scene she’s in. Her rendition of “He’s Large” in the film is an absolute showstopper amongst scene after head-scratching scene. 

But it was Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining from that same year that gave Duvall her most iconic role. Cast as “the girl with the mousy hair” across from Jack Nicholson’s slowly crumbling writer where the couple (along with their prepubescent son) are charged with caretaking a hotel during its offseason, Duvall is the one who grounds the film in reality. 

Duvall’s holding of the center was rare for her. She was often cast as the curio in her films. But not here. While her inherent eccentricities were still there to be seen, they were tamped down, as Duvall played a woman trying to hold her family together in frigid isolation at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. At that point in his career, Nicholson’s acting style had become so ingrained with his personality that you always knew you were watching Jack be “Jack.” Duvall’s pensive performance offsets Nicholson’s easily identifiable mannerisms (however effective), and in doing so, makes the film and her on screen partner’s performance all the more terrifying as she attempts to normalize her husband’s increasingly bizarre behavior. Nicholson may be the event, but it’s Duvall’s story, and the center holds.

Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (King hated the film, by the way) masterfully uses silence to create a sense of dread and claustrophobia in a hotel that can only be described as massive. Kubrick’s judicious ratcheting up of the horror (and Nicholson’s descent into madness) peaks when Nicholson comes after Duvall with an ax. In one of the most terrifying scenes ever committed to film, Nicholson chops away at a bathroom door with Duvall going full Jamie-Lee Curtis horror queen on the other side. 

It is rumored that Kubrick notoriously put Duvall through more than one hundred takes, until her own anxiety was so palpable that it matched her character’s. 

After The Shining, Duvall appeared in Terry Gilliam’s 1981 well regarded fantasy film Time Bandits. And then all of a sudden, after coming off of three high profile productions in which she excelled, Duvall’s greatest years on film suddenly came to an end. 

There were some highlights in the final forty years of her career. She appeared in Tim Burton’s excellent short film Frankenweenie in 1984, Roxanne with Steve Martin in ‘87, Soderbergh’s The Underneath in ‘95, and Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady in ‘96. Most of these parts were small, and few took advantage of her specific talents. In fact in the latter part of her on screen life, she was probably best known for two children’s programs: Tall Tales & Legends (which received an Emmy nomination for best Prime Time Children’s Programming) and Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories which also was nominated for an Emmy.

In 2002 Duvall made a film titled Manna From Heaven. She then disappeared from screens both small and large before making one final appearance in a 2023 horror film called The Forest Hills. In between those two films there were rumors of mental illness that seem to be substantiated when she was subjected to ridicule and exploitation on an even more horrendous than usual episode of Dr. Phil. 

It’s a funny thing about Shelley Duvall. She’s one of those actors that you would think Hollywood wouldn’t have a clue of what to do with. But for whatever reason (mostly Robert Altman) she had a magnificent beginning to her career. And then, just like that, Hollywood lost the Shelley Duvall plot. 

But that decade of uncommon individuality does exist. Duvall did have that magnificent run. And if we (and certainly she) deserved more, well, maybe we were lucky to have it at all. 

Because Shelley Duvall was the other. Her kind had never been seen before, and nor has she since.

Shelley Duvall died on July 11, 2024. She was 75 years old.