Shelley Duvall, the beloved character actress best known for starring in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King horror classic The Shining, has passed away at the age of 75.
The award-winning actress died of complications from diabetes, her partner Dan Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Too much suffering lately, now she’s free,” Gilroy told the outlet.
Duvall was born July 7, 1949, in Fort Worth, Texas. She considered pursuing a career in science before she was “discovered” by three crew members on director Robert Altman’s 1970 film Brewster McCloud at a party in Houston where Shelley’s then-fiancé Bernard Sampson was displaying artwork, according to the Los Angeles Times.
he continued to work with the director, in films like in 1971’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1974’s Thieves Like Us and 1975’s Nashville.
Duvall went on to appear in more than a dozen movies and television shows over the course of the ’70s, including an appearance in 1977’s Annie Hall, before she made her best-known movie: Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining.
The film, which required a 56-week shoot and holds a Guinness World Record for “most retakes for one scene with dialogue,” starred Duvall and Jack Nicholson in an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 horror novel of the same name.
