Jack Nicholson was scary. But Shelley Duvall delivered the real horror in ‘The Shining’

Shelley Duvall in The Shining. Pictorial Press/Alamy

Pictorial Press/Alamy

I was half an hour into a Halloween-season rewatch of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, catching it on the big screen for the first time in decades, when it hit me. The actor carrying this movie isn’t Jack Nicholson. It’s Shelley Duvall.

Duvall, who died in 2024 at age 75, was in her late 20s when she made the film, based on Stephen King’s spookfest novel. She