Actress Shelley Duvall, best known for ‘The Shining,’ has passed away.

She was 75.

“Duvall died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Texas, according to her longtime partner, Breakfast Club musician Dan Gilroy,” the New York Post reports.

From the New York Post:

Duvall was born and raised in Texas. In 1970, she met director Robert Altman at a party and he asked her to be in his movie “Brewster McCloud,” which marked her first-ever on-screen role.

“I simply got on a plane and did it. I was swept away,” she said in a past interview.

Duvall went on to star in more of Altman’s movies, including “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville,” “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” and “3 Women.”

She talked about collaborating with Altman (who died in 2006) in an interview with the New York Times in 1977. “He offers me damn good roles. None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me, and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him,” she said.

Duvall was also in 1977’s “Annie Hall” directed by Woody Allen.

WATCH (WARNING – EXPLICIT LANGUAGE):

“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter.

The Hollywood Reporter added:

In November 2016, a disheveled Duvall appeared on an episode of the syndicated talk show Dr. Phil and revealed that she was suffering from mental illness. “I am very sick. I need help,” she said. Four years later, THR‘s Seth Abramovitch visited her for a memorable story.

Before she fled Hollywood for her native Texas in the mid-1990s, Duvall had a thriving career as a versatile, one-of-a-kind actress and head of her own production company, Think Entertainment, which created star-studded, innovative children’s programming for cable television that netted her two Emmy Award nominations.

While attending junior college in her hometown of Houston, Duvall was discovered by Altman staff members and talked into taking a screen test. She then made her onscreen debut as teenage seductress and Astrodome tour guide Suzanne Davis in Brewster McCloud (1970).

A decade later, Duvall sang and starred opposite Robin Williams as the iconic comic-strip character Olive Oyl, the strong-willed damsel in distress, in Altman’s live-action adaptation of Popeye.

 

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