Remembering Shelley Duvall

Posted on July 15, 2024

by Eric P

Given her iconic career in movies, it’s maybe surprising that Shelley Duvall had no intention of going into acting until members of director Robert Altman’s film crew noticed her at a party in Houston and contrived to get her in front of their boss. What isn’t surprising is that she got noticed. With the lithe and angular silhouette of a Jules Feiffer cartoon character, limpid eyes as big as planets, and a voice like a musical instrument that hasn’t been invented yet, Duvall wasn’t built to be overlooked.

And her most famous performances didn’t so much defy expectations as ignore them entirely. When she played the spinach-eating sailor man’s girlfriend Olive Oyl in the live-action Popeye, she kinetically embodied the essence of the Twizzler-bodied, pontoon-footed cartoon but also endowed her with three-dimensional humanity. When you revisit her work in The Shining you realize how far down the path to irreconcilable dysfunction she and the Torrence family had already gone even before they checked in to one of the worst hotels on Tripadvisor; there’s a full-bodied fearlessness to the ease with which she transforms from troubled wife into expressionistic avatar of terror. And in Roxanne she converts the most thankless assignment in acting – the sensible best friend – into a charming figure suggestive of a boundless inner life and unspoken wisdom.

In her acting roles, Duvall was usually adjacent to a strong-willed male personality – Altman, Kubrick, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Jack Nicholson (who can be pretty intense even when he isn’t swinging an axe). So it’s notable that she took the initiative to become a producer in her own right, creating television’s wryly literate and star-studded Faerie Tale Theatre and its offshoots; suddenly she was the one telling collaborators like Tim Burton, Mick Jagger, Vincent Price, Frank Zappa, Carl Reiner, Paul Reubens, and Francis Ford Coppola what to do, and collecting awards for the effort.

Her later life was reportedly vexed by sorrows and struggle, but as with any artist what we’re left with is her work: idiosyncratic, compulsively watchable, and defiantly her.

Did you like this blog post? Keep up to date with all of our posts by subscribing to the Library’s newsletters!

Keep your reading list updated with our book lists. Our staff love to read and they’ll give you the scoop on new tv-series inspired titles, hobbies, educational resources, pop culture, current events, and more!

Looking for more great titles? Get personalized recommendations from our librarians with this simple form.