From 1970 to 1974, Shelley Duvall was married to Bernard Sampson, who at the time was the struggling artist of the pair. Before they were married, he painted and would showcase his art at parties with a little help from Duvall’s charismatic personality. It was ironically at one of these parties — where she was enthusiastically pitching Sampson’s work to a crowd of intrigued guests — that someone first had the idea to whisk her away into the world of film and television.

Little did Duvall know that watching her pitch were crew members from the then-in-production film “Brewster McCloud,” the 1970 Robert Altman black comedy in which she would ultimately make her on-screen debut. As the Los Angeles Times reported back in 1991, the crew members were so arrested by both her personality and her unique appearance that they staged a meeting between Duvall, Altman, and producer Lou Adler under the pretense that the two men were actually potential buyers for Sampson’s work. To rub salt in the wound, Adler told the Times that Duvall’s pitch far outshone whatever paintings he had brought.

Altman offered Duvall a role on the spot, and (after some debate) she reluctantly agreed to leave Texas for the first time in her life to join him on set. He subsequently cast her in another project, 1971’s “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” after which she returned home to resume supporting Sampson’s art career. Sadly, their relationship quickly evaporated, and Duvall left Texas once again to pursue acting.

Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” had some detractors, notably including Stephen King himself. But to be fair, it’s worth noting that King had arguably been primed to hate “The Shining” before it was even released.

Despite choosing to adapt King’s story based on the fact that it was both pulpy enough to revive his box office numbers after the underperforming “Barry Lyndon” and artistically rich enough to be engaging and challenging for the director, Kubrick seemed to have little respect for King throughout the process. He famously rejected King’s screenplay sight-unseen and made several deviations from what King considered to be his most personal work. As such, it’s fairly unsurprising that the author had nothing kind to say about “The Shining” when it was released in 1980 — though it was slightly jarring when he revived his frustrations over 20 years later (while promoting the publication of his sequel, “Doctor Sleep”) by disparaging Shelley Duvall’s Wendy to the BBC. “[Wendy’s] basically just there to scream and be stupid,” he told the outlet, aligning himself with other prominent voices who have expressed that Duvall’s emotionally taxing performance could not save an otherwise underwritten and misogynistic character.

Even at the time, Duvall’s work was controversially targeted by the inaugural Golden Raspberry Awards, which nominated her for worst actress. The organization has since expressed regret for this decision after learning of Duvall’s on-set treatment, but stood by nominating Kubrick for worst director — incidentally because of his many deviations from King’s source material.

In the early hours of January 17, 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake shook much of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California. It only lasted for a dozen or so seconds; the damage it left, however, lasted much longer.

In addition to causing north of $20 billion in property damage alone ($42 billion in today’s dollars) and resulting in over double that in terms of total economic losses, the quake claimed the lives of 72 people (including those who died of heart attacks), injured over 7,000 more, and left 20,000 people without shelter. Among those affected was Shelley Duvall, whose house was severely damaged to the point that it played a major role in her ultimate decision to leave LA for good. Shelley Duvall Archive on X, an account on X run by a personal friend of Duvall’s and dedicated to extensively documenting and archiving photos, articles, and events from throughout her life, shared a quote from Duvall attributed to a 1994 issue of the Houston Chronicle: “I can deal with hurricanes,” he said. “But it’s extremely frightening to have the earth move so much. Being a Texan, you kind of know when to get the heck out of Dodge.”

She spoke about the earthquake’s effect on her life in a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, in which she elaborated that it wasn’t just the disaster itself that wore her out. “Afterwards, it’s like FEMA, then the next guys, and the next guys,” she said. “Engineers one day, insurance people the next. Sometimes at the same time.”

As her longtime partner Dan Gilroy told The New York Times, everyone was interested in speculating about Shelley Duvall’s wellbeing in a grossly voyeuristic fashion, seemingly relying solely on rumors and candid photos — from which people interpreted Duvall’s natural aging process as some indication of a tragic physical decline. And arguably from the same depths of morbid gossip that brought forth her harmful interview with Phil McGraw aka “Dr. Phil,” there also emerged speculation that her role in “The Shining” was in fact not career-defining, but career-ending.

In the decades since playing Wendy Torrance, Duvall has been incredibly open about the intensity of shooting the film. But while her career flourished afterwards both in front of and behind the camera, these on-set stories gave way to secondhand allegations of abuse and mistreatment. From the circumstances that led to Duvall almost quitting the film (and perhaps with some influence from popular gossip about her mental and physical decline), it seems fans ran with the idea that filming “The Shining” was in fact so traumatizing for Duvall that she fled Hollywood forever.

There are even voices online that might claim themselves defenders of Duvall yet have adopted the assumption that Stanley Kubrick’s alleged abuse makes him personally responsible for whatever her present circumstances may be. The truth is that neither “The Shining” nor Kubrick appeared to have played a major or direct role in her 20-year hiatus from acting.

Another persistent Shelley Duvall rumor that has had to be ferociously contested by her supporters online is that the actor is homeless. We were unable to track down the source of this claim, though it may well have spun out of her interview with Phil McGraw. Around the same time as their televised interview, Duvall gave a separate interview to the tabloid celebrity gossip website RadarOnline.

In return for her giving them her time and candidly answering questions about her life, the website characterized her as mentally unwell (they write that she “chain-smoked and rambled on about aliens” and was “refusing treatment for mental health problems” — presumably the treatment arranged by McGraw) and on the brink of financial ruin. According to their interview, Duvall’s acting fortune had entirely dried up, leaving her with only $1,660 monthly social security to get by. She also seems to accuse CBS and Fox Video of failing to cut her into a multimillion-dollar distribution deal for some unnamed project.

Though it’s hard to discern how much of this interview reflects reality, it is true that Duvall has faced financial hardship. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, she made allusions to what sounds like a bad investment. “It’s not just owning something that makes money,” she said cryptically. “You have to also control it. You have to make sure it’s a good deal.” One of Duvall’s friends also told the outlet that he believes failure to pay storage fees led to much of her film memorabilia being sold at auction.

Despite her ailments, Shelley Duvall is by all accounts living a full, happy life on her Texas ranch, where she spends time with Dan Gilroy, their many pets, and a growing circle of friends. Similarly to Sarah Lukowski, an artist and then-resident of Austin named Ryan Obermeyer found himself in Duvall’s circle after stopping by to drop off one of his paintings along with a letter of support. He subsequently helped her to recover some of her lost personal effects (including letters, which he was able to purchase off of eBay), reconnected her with old friends (including the late actor Paul Reubens, who also appeared on “Faerie Tale Theatre”), and arranged a large celebration for her 70th birthday at one of her favorite restaurants.

She even returned to horror in 2023, starring in the low-budget independent horror film “The Forest Hills.” “I wanted to act again,” she told The New York Times of her unexpected involvement in the film. “And then this guy kept calling, and so I wound up doing it.” Director Scott Goldberg spoke highly of her work on the film, gushing that watching her perform again “was as if time never passed.” Though it’s unknown if Shelley Duvall has any further plans to perform, she must be aware now of audiences old and new who see themselves in her.