Shelley Duvall’s Mother Died From COVID-19, ‘The Shining’ Actress Reveals

Shelley Duvall resurfaced in a new Hollywood Reporter profile Thursday and revealed that her mother recently died after contracting the coronavirus. The interview was Duvall’s first public appearance since her disturbing 2016 appearance on Dr. Phil, which she also criticized this week. The 71-year-old Duvall has not appeared in a film since 2002 and left Hollywood in the mid-1990s.

Duvall was born in Texas to Bob and Bobbie Duvall. Her father was a cattle auctioneer and criminal lawyer, who died in 1995 at 74. Her mother was a real estate agent, whose success Duvall is proud of to this day. “She founded her own company in Houston — Space City Realty. NASA was just being built, Duvall told The Hollywood Reporter. She later noted that her mother died in March 2020 after contracting COVID-19. “Just after she turned 92,” Duvall said. “That was a big one.”

Duvall has three younger brothers, Scott, Shane, and Stewart. She said she is not regularly in contact with them. “I don’t know where they are,” she told THR. “They’re always off doing something. Shane’s on a fishing boat. Stewart sings with a friend of his named Mitch. Classic, huh?”

Before Duvall’s THR profile the only other time people had heard from her in the past few years was her appearance on Dr. Phil. Even at the time, the interview was considered controversial, with host Dr. Phil McGraw being accused of exploiting her mental illness. THR journalist Seth Abramovitch wrote that Duvall was “visibly distressed” when he brought up McGraw’s name. “I found out the kind of person he is the hard way,” Duvall said, later adding that her mother did not like McGraw. She also said Dan Gilroy, with whom she lives in Texas, did not think Duvall should have gone on Dr. Phil.

After the episode drew backlash, Duvall said McGraw tried to connect with her family again, even calling her mother. “He started calling my mother,” Duvall recalled. “She told him, ‘Don’t call my daughter anymore.’ But he started calling my mother all the time trying to get her to let me talk to him again.”

A Dr. Phil spokesperson defended the episode, explaining that they were trying to help Duvall. “Unfortunately, she declined our initial offer for inpatient treatment that would have included full physical and mental evaluations, giving her a chance to privately manage her challenges,” the spokesman told THR. “After many months of follow-up, in collaboration with her mother, she ultimately refused assistance. We were of course very disappointed, but those offers for help remain open today.”

Duvall was an unavoidable presence in movies during the 1970s, starring in several Robert Altman movies, including Nashville and Thieves Like Us. In 1980, she starred opposite Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. During the 1980s, her career took a different turn when she created and hosted the children’s series Faerie Tale Theatre and Tall Tales & Legends. But in the mid-1990s, she left Hollywood and has not appeared in a movie in two decades.