10 Great Shelley Duvall Performances to Stream
Shelley Duvall, who died on Thursday at 75, had one of the most thrilling and complicated careers in modern cinema history. Discovered by the director Robert Altman, who became her greatest collaborator, Duvall fell into acting almost by accident. But her screen presence was so beguiling and irresistible that she became one of the defining stars of the 1970s and ’80s.
Her layered and detailed performances in the likes of “3 Women” and “The Shining” made her a celebrated star. And yet she never fit easily into Hollywood, remaining always decidedly herself. In later life, Duvall retreated from acting and the public eye, but left behind a remarkable and diverse body of work. Here’s where you can stream some of her best.
1970
‘Brewster McCloud’
Buy or rent on most major platforms.
When Duvall was discovered by Robert Altman and the actor and casting director Bert Remsen, in Houston, she had no intention of becoming a performer. “I wanted to be a great scientist, not an actress. Madame Curie was my heroine,” she once told Roger Ebert. But Altman and Remsen had other plans, putting her in their strange delight of a movie about a boy, played by Bud Cort, who lives in the Houston Astrodome and wants to build wings to fly. Once she appears onscreen as the tour guide Suzanne, it’s clear she is one of the most unusual presences ever to grace the screen. With her oversize eyelashes, a staple of her personal style that highlighted her features, she’s intriguingly cheerful as she chirps away about diarrhea. Her optimism seduces Cort’s Brewster, and with him the audience, even if she turns out to be fickle.
1971
‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’
Stream on Tubi; buy or rent on most major platforms.
