Shelley Duvall said acting in 'The Shining' was 'excruciating': 'I will never give that much again'

Before Shelley Duvall vanished from the screen in early 2000s, she spent years as one of Hollywood's hottest actors.

Duvall, who died July 11 at age 75, starred in Robert Altman's Oscar-winning 1975 drama “Nashville," played Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams in the 1980 live-action "Popeye," and made fans laugh in the zany 1981 sci-fi comedy "Time Bandits."

But Duvall’s most famous role, that of Wendy, the terrified wife of Jack Nicholson’s character, Jack Torrance, in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” proved to be her most challenging.

In an interview on TODAY in 1981, she called making the movie "extremely difficult."

Duvall’s character in the Stephen King adaptation is in a constant state of terror in the movie because she’s being tormented by a husband who goes insane in a snowed-in hotel. Jack ends up chasing Wendy and their young son, Danny, through the hotel with an axe.

Duvall said in interviews that playing Wendy was emotionally and physically draining — a job made even harder by the famously exacting Kubrick.

“So here was my chance to work with Kubrick," Duvall told Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert in December 1980. “And that was another category. Going through day after day of excruciating work. Almost unbearable.

"Jack Nicholson’s character had to be crazy and angry all the time. And in my character I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week," she added.

The following year, Duvall opened up to People about the emotional toll the movie took on her. "I will never give that much again. If you want to get into pain and call it art, go ahead, but not with me," she said.

Duvall's memories of filming the classic American horror movie remained unchanged 40 years later during a candid February 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie’s shoot took a whopping 56 weeks with Duvall and Nicholson putting in up to 16 hours six days a week.

Kubrick, who died in 1999, famously demanded his actors reshoot scenes over and over, even earning a mention in the Guinness Book of Records for “most retakes for one scene with dialogue" for one "Shining" scene featuring Scatman Crothers and child actor Danny Lloyd that was shot 148 times.

“(Kubrick) doesn’t print anything until at least the 35th take,” Duvall recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. “Thirty-five takes, running and crying and carrying a little boy, it gets hard. And full performance from the first rehearsal. That’s difficult.”

One of the movie’s most famous scenes features Jack stalking a sobbing Wendy up a staircase as she clutches a baseball bat to protect herself from her suddenly deranged husband.

Kubrick made Duvall and Nicholson shoot the scene 127 times.

“It was a difficult scene, but it turned out to be one of the best scenes in the film," she added.

She told the BBC in 1980 about the effect multiple takes had on her as an actor.

“I had never done more than say, 15 takes before in my life. So, it was a great change for me to do so many. After you do a certain number, it sort of goes dead, and then five more takes or so, it revives itself, and by then you know the scene like the back of your hand and you can make no mistakes with it and you forget all reality other than what you’re doing,” she said.

Duvall also revealed, to The Hollywood Reporter, how she channeled her character's emotional state. She prepared each day on set by listening to "sad songs" on her Sony Walkman.

"Or you just think about something very sad in your life or how much you miss your family or friends. But after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day,’" she said.

"And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry," she continued. "To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying...

"I don’t know how I did it. Jack said that to me, too. He said, ‘I don’t know how you do it,'" Duvall added.

When The Hollywood Reporter asked Duvall if Kubrick had been cruel to her during the shoot, she replied, "He’s got that streak in him. He definitely has that," though she also said Kubrick was "very warm and friendly to me" in the same interview.

Oscar winner Anjelica Huston, who was Nicholson's live-in girlfriend when he was shooting "The Shining," had a different take. She told The Hollywood Reporter she remembered Nicholson and Kubrick "ganging up" on Duvall on the movie's set.

“I got the feeling, certainly through what Jack was saying at the time, that Shelley was having a hard time just dealing with the emotional content of the piece,” Huston told The Hollywood Reporter. “And they didn’t seem to be all that sympathetic. It seemed to be a little bit like the boys were ganging up. That might have been completely my misread on the situation, but I just felt it.

"And when I saw her during those days, she seemed generally a bit tortured, shook up. I don’t think anyone was being particularly careful of her," she added.

Huston said watching "The Shining" today, she believes "actually carried the movie on her back."

What's for sure is the movie propelled Duvall to a new level of fame, which she recalled to People in 1981.

“When somebody recognizes you at a Dairy Queen in Texas,” she said, “you’re a star.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com