The Shining and Annie Hall actor Duvall dies aged 75

Shelley Duvall never intended to become a movie star, or an actor of any kind, but when she did she changed the medium forever.

- KEVIN E G PERRY

Her long association with Robert Altman made the Texas-born actor, who has died at 75, one of the most recognisable stars of 1970s cinema. In the decade that followed, she changed the face of children’s television as the producer and star of a string of shows that reimagined fairytales for a modern audience. Although her career was long and idiosyncratic, she will probably be best remembered for her indelible performance in the 1980 horror classic The Shining, immortalised with her big eyes as wide as the moon and her face contorted into a scream Edvard Munch could have painted as her husband breaks through a bathroom door with an axe.

She once described her arrival into the business of filmmaking as “kind of a fairytale in itself”. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, to Robert, a cattle auctioneer turned lawyer, and Bonnie, a real estate agent, she grew up with three younger brothers – Scott, Shane and Stewart. While at school in Houston, she aspired to become a scientist, although she abandoned those dreams and dropped out of South Texas Junior College after witnessing a monkey vivisection. She moved in with her boyfriend, an artist named Bernard Sampson, and at the age of 20 threw a fateful party at their home.