Get the latest gossip
Remembering Shelley Duvall: In ‘The Shining’ and the Movies of Robert Altman, She Showed Us the Quirkiness of Our Normality
Shelley Duvall came up through Robert Altman's films, only to recede right after "The Shining" and "Popeye" made her a star.
The film presents Wendy as the earnest soul of traditional middle-class American womanhood, a homemaker who’s devoted enough to try and make a home out of the Overlook Hotel, a cavernous resort nestled in the Colorado Rockies. In 1970, a few months after “MASH” came out and made Altman the hottest director in Hollywood (a status that wouldn’t last long — he was far too independent an artist), he was shooting his next feature in Houston, a fantasy comedy called “Brewster McCloud,” when he met Duvall at a party and, encouraged by a handful of crew members, decided to cast her in the movie. What they were all reacting to was what you can only call Duvall’s being — the eyes that were like something out of anime, her rabbity two front teeth, and a quality that could make you laugh or break your heart: the softness of her gaze, the tender passive radiance with which she looked out at the world.
Or read this on Variety
