“The quintessential American actress”: Roger Ebert on the unique qualities of Shelley Duvall
Throughout his career writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gazed upon some of the most significant actors in American film history. The iconic critic deeply understood what it took for an actor to succeed, and he once spoke of the unique qualities that the late Shelley Duvall had shown in many of her performances.
Duvall passed away at the age of 75 after establishing herself as a true icon of the big screen. The Texas-born actor had been discovered by Robert Altman, who cast her in his black comedy Brewster McCloud and then had her collaborate with him again on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, and 3 Women, even though she had initially been resistant to becoming a famous actor.
Subsequent efforts in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining duly followed, although the latter movie left a deep scar on Duvall, which she would never quite recover from. Kubrick reportedly mistreated her and drove her to the point of near insanity as a result of endless takes and re-takes.
Back in 1980, Ebert interviewed Duvall around the release of The Shining and spoke of his wild impression of her as an actor. “Shelley Duvall is like a precious piece of china,” Ebert wrote. “She looks and sounds like almost nobody else, and if it is true that she was born to play the character Olive Oyl,” referring to the character she portrayed in Altman’s live-action version of Popeye.
In fact, Ebert claimed that Duvall was capable of playing a wider range of characters than any of her contemporaries of the 1970s, which, judging from her remarkable filmography, was proven more than ten times over. For instance, even in her Altman movies alone, her characters ranged from a flirtatious yet ignored woman in 3 Women to a “goofy groupie” in Nashville.
Ebert went on to write of Duvall, “In all of her roles, there is an openness about her as if somehow nothing has come between her open face and our eyes—no camera, dialogue, makeup, method of acting—and she is just spontaneously being the character.” Indeed, there was an openness to Duvall, a vulnerability even, one that seemed to be exploited by Kubrick during the production of The Shining, an experience she referred to as “excruciating” and “almost unbearable”.
Altman, on the other hand, saw Duvall as his protégée and provided her with the platform to deliver her best acting work and become what Ebert had called “the quintessential American actress”. There had been a deep level of trust between Altman and Duvall, so much so that she referred to the director as family.”
Ebert had encountered and interviewed many of the most significant actors of the 20th century, but few came as close in his eyes to a unique sense of brilliance as Shelley Duvall, a woman who could command a wide range of characters with an unbridled sense of vulnerability and openness.
Having passed away at the age of 75, Duvall has left a brilliant legacy as a key proponent of the brilliance of American cinema. She is known and loved for her collaborations with Robert Altman and her ability to captivate the most notorious film critics, like Roger Ebert.
