Shelley Alexis Duvall is an American actress, producer, writer, singer, voice artist, and
comedienne.
She began her career in various Robert Altman films in the 1970s, including Brewster McCloud,
Thieves Like Us, Nashville, and 3 Women, which won her the Cannes Film Festival Award for
Best Actress and a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.
Duvall had a supporting role in Annie Hall before starring in lead roles in Popeye and
The Shining.
Later, Duvall appeared in Time Bandits, Frankenweenie, and The Portrait of a Lady.
She is also an Emmy-nominated producer responsible for Faerie Tale Theatre and other child-friendly
programming.
Duvall's most recent performance was in Manna from Heaven.
Early life Duvall was born Shelley Alexis Duvall in Houston,
Texas on July 7, 1949 to Robert Richardson "Bobby" Duvall, a lawyer, and Bobbie Ruth
Crawford.
Duvall has three siblings, her brothers Scott, Shane and Stewart.
Career After leaving school, Duvall sold cosmetics
at Foley's and attended South Texas Junior College, where she majored in Nutrition and
Diet Therapy.
She met Robert Altman when he was shooting his forthcoming film Brewster McCloud on location.
He offered Duvall a part in the film.
She said, "I got tired of arguing, and thought maybe I am an actress.
They told me to come.
I simply got on a plane and did it.
I was swept away.
Duvall had never left Texas before Altman offered her a film role.
She flew to Hollywood and landed the role of a free-spirited love interest to Bud Cort's
reclusive Brewster in Brewster McCloud.
1970s Altman chose Duvall for roles as an unsatisfied
mail-order bride in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the daughter of a convict and mistress to
Keith Carradine's character in Thieves Like Us, a spaced-out groupie in Nashville, and
a sympathetic Wild West woman in Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History
Lesson.
The same year, Duvall left Altman to star as Bernice, a wealthy girl from Wisconsin
in PBS’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair.
She also hosted an evening of Saturday Night Live and appeared in 5 sketches: "Programming
Change," "Video Vixens," "Night of the Moonies," "Van Arguments," and "Goodnights."
In 1977, Duvall starred as Mildred "Millie" Lammoreaux in Altman's 3 Women.
Duvall's performance garnered the award for Best Actress at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival
and the LAFCA Award for Best Actress.
She appeared in a minor role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall.
1980s Duvall's next role was Wendy Torrance in The
Shining.
Nicholson states in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures that Kubrick was
great to work with but that he was "a different director" with Duvall.
Because of Kubrick's methodical nature, principal photography took a year to complete.
Kubrick insisted that Duvall and Nicholson perform the baseball bat scene 127 times,
which broke a world record for the most retakes of a single movie scene with spoken dialogue.
Kubrick and Duvall argued frequently, although Duvall later said she learned more from working
with Kubrick on The Shining than she did on all her earlier films.
While Duvall was in London shooting The Shining, Altman asked her to play Olive Oyl in his
big-screen adaptation of Popeye, a role Roger Ebert believes she was born to play:
"Shelley Duvall is a like a precious piece of china with a tinkling personality.
She looks and sounds like almost nobody else, and if it is true that she was born to play
the character Olive Oyl, it is also true that she has possibly played more really different
kinds of characters than almost any other young actress of the 1970s."
Her role of Pansy in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits followed.
In 1982, Duvall narrated, hosted and was executive producer of the children's television program
Faerie Tale Theatre.
She starred in seven episodes of the series; "Rumpelstiltskin", "Rapunzel", "The Nightingale",
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Puss in Boots", and "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp".
Since the program's first episode "The Frog Prince", which starred Robin Williams and
Teri Garr, Duvall has produced 27 hour-long episodes of the program.
In 1985, she created Tall Tales & Legends, another one-hour anthology series for Showtime,
which featured adaptations of American folk tales.
As with Faerie Tale Theatre, the series starred well-known Hollywood actors with Duvall as
host, executive producer, and occasional guest star.
The series ran for just nine episodes yet garnered Duvall an Emmy nomination.
While Duvall was producing Faerie Tale Theatre, it was reported that she was to star as the
lead in the film adaptation of Tom Robbins’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which actually
starred Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, her sister Cindy, and Sissy Spacek.
The project was delayed, and when it released in 1993 it starred an entirely different cast.
She also landed roles in films and television series: the mother of a boy whose dog is struck
by car in Tim Burton's short film Frankenweenie, a lonely and timid woman who receives a message
from a flying saucer in The Twlight Zone episode "The Once and Future King/A Saucer of Loneliness",
and the friend of Steve Martin's character in the comedy Roxanne.
In 1988, Duvall founded a new production company called Think Entertainment to develop programs
and television movies for cable channels.
She created Nightmare Classics, a third Showtime anthology series that featured adaptations
of well-known horror stories by authors including Edgar Allan Poe.
Unlike the previous two series, Nightmare Classics was aimed at a teenage and adult
audience.
It was the least successful series that Duvall produced for Showtime and ran for only four
episodes.
1990s In 1991, Duvall portrayed Jenny Wilcox, wife
of Charlie Wilcox in the Hulk Hogan action-adventure film Suburban Commando.
In October that year, Duvall released two compact discs, Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall...
Sweet Dreams that features Duvall signing lullaby songs and Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall...
Merry Christmas, on which Duvall sings Christmas songs.
The following year, Think Entertainment joined the newly formed Universal Family Entertainment
to create Duvall's fourth Showtime original series, Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories,
which featured animated adaptations of children's storybooks with celebrity narrators and garnered
her a second Emmy nomination.
Duvall produced a fifth series for Showtime, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, before selling Think Entertainment
in 1993 and retiring as a producer.
Duvall's production work has gained her six CableACE Awards and one Peabody Award.
A year later, Duvall landed a guest spot on the television series L.A. Law as Margo Stanton,
a show dog owner and breeder who presses charges against the owner of a Welsh Corgi that mated
with her prize-winning Afghan Hound.
She appeared as the vain, over-friendly, but harmless Countess Gemini—sister to the calculating
Gilbert Osmond—in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of the Henry James novel The Portrait of a
Lady.
A year later, she played a beatific nun in the comedy film Changing Habits and a besotted,
murderous, ostrich-farm owner in Guy Maddin's fourth feature Twilight of the Ice Nymphs.
The same year she played Chris Cooper's character's gullible wife who yearns for a better life
in Horton Foote's made-for-television film, Alone.
Duvall continued to make film and television appearances throughout the late-1990s.
In 1998, she played Drew Barrymore's mother in the comedy Home Fries and Hilary Duff's
aunt in the direct-to-video children's film Casper Meets Wendy.
Near the end of the decade she returned to the horror genre with Tale of the Mummy and
The 4th Floor.
2000s In the 2000s, Duvall accepted minor roles,
including the mother of Matthew Lawrence's character in the horror-comedy Boltneck and
Haylie Duff's aunt in the independent family film Dreams in the Attic, which was sold to
the Disney Channel but was never released.
Her most recent acting appearance was a small role in the 2002 independent film Manna from
Heaven.
Personal life Duvall was married to artist Bernard Sampson
between 1970 and 1974; the couple divorced as Duvall's acting career accelerated.
While she was shooting in New York for her part in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, she met
singer/songwriter Paul Simon.
They lived together for two years and their relationship ended when Duvall introduced
Simon to her friend, actress Carrie Fisher; Fisher took up with Simon.
Shortly before the release of Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, it was reported that Duvall
and actor Stanley Wilson were set to marry.
However, no further reports were released regarding this.
Filmography Television
Discography Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall...Merry Christmas
Hello, I'm Shelley Duvall...Sweet Dreams Awards and nominations
References
External links Shelley Duvall at the Internet Movie Database