“It’s not just aging. It’s violence.”

I literally dropped my phone in shock when I saw this current photo of Shelley Duvall.

“I was a star; I had leading roles,” she said, solemnly shaking her head. She had parked in the town square for a takeout lunch — chicken salad, quiche and sweetened iced coffee, finished off with a drag of a Parliament. She lowered her voice. “People think it’s just aging, but it’s not. It’s violence.”

 
Stanley Kubrick’s physical and emotional demands of her in The Shining, this scene in particular, 127 takes,

caused her hands to bleed, her face and eyes to become red, tear-stained, swollen and puffy, her hair to fall out--a nervous breakdown. Later, she descended into mental illness.

Kubrick was inspired to cast her in his film after seeing her in Mr. Altman’s “3 Women.”

“He said: ‘I like the way you cry.’”

 

Duvall played the role of a woman suddenly trapped, isolated, made a hostage to a man who himself descended into murderous madness. Kubrick intentionally instilled terror in the cast members, especially Duvall, as well as in the audience. He kept the details of Jack Nicholson’s “axe door” scene from her. He recreated the conditions of the screenplay in Shelley Duvall the person. The Shining took 500 days to film, one scene 127 takes. She was isolated on set, ignored and demeaned. She had no idea until she saw the final cut what was to come in the scene with the twin girls “and what was behind them”, the flood of blood. “It was scary, very scary.” She speaks fondly of working with Kubrick. Indeed, those taken captive come to identify with their captors, a response given the label, Stockholm Syndrome. 

So, Shelley Duvall was not acting in those scenes “crying in pain, fear, and exhaustion”, she was “enduring a trauma response.”

The former “Texas Twiggy”,

last acted in 2002, moved out of L.A. and now lives in a small Texas town.