Robert Altman was in Houston filming “Brewster McCloud” when he met Shelley Duvall at a party. After the filmmaker and his crew became close to Duvall, Altman was convinced that she would be perfect as the off-beat young woman who falls for Brewster. Duvall, who had sold cosmetics and studied nutrition in college, was stunned. “I’m not an actress,” she insisted. To which Altman replied, “Oh yes, you are.”
At least that’s the way that Keith Carradine, a frequent collaborator of both Altman and Duvall, heard it. “I love that story,” Carradine says. “It’s so Bob, it’s so Shelley.”
Duvall died on July 11 at the age of 75, having long ago left Hollywood, but she left behind a treasure trove of indelible onscreen performances, playing Jack Nicholson’s terrified wife in “The Shining,” as well as a series of quirky roles in Altman films like “Nashville,” “3 Women” and “Popeye,” playing Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams as the spinach-enhanced title character. There was also her delicate work opposite Carradine in “Thieves Like Us,” a Depression era crime film about an escaped convict and the woman he falls in love with while on the lam.
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“On ‘Thieves Like Us,’ I found myself falling under her spell like my character would,” Carradine remembers. “It didn’t feel like we were performing anything. It was jus so easy. All I had to do was be present and remember my lines.”
Below, Carradine shares his memories of working with Duvall (and Altman), while ticking off the reasons he thinks this woman from Texas without any formal training was able to etch some of the most memorable on-screen characters of the 1970s and ’80s.
I don’t have a distinctive memory of the first time we met, but it must have been on “McCabe & Mrs. Miller.” I had some scenes in the brothel, which is where her character, a mail-order bride, goes to earn a living and survive after her husband died. The whole thing was overwhelming for me, because it was my second feature. She was a relative newbie too — she’d done “Brewster McCloud” with Bob. But whenever it was that I met her, I was immediately drawn to her presence. She had that fascinating physical appearance — there was something slightly off-center and hauntingly beautiful about her. And then she had that extraordinary personality; she was quirky and just utterly enchanting. What you saw on screen, that’s just who she was.
But I really got to know her on “Thieves Like Us.“[“Nashville” and “Thieves Like Us” writer] Joan Tewkesbury and I exchanged texts over the last few days about Shelley’s passing and the sadness we felt. She was saying that on “Thieves Like Us” there was a magic between us that just worked. And I said to Joan, “It was all Shelley.” I mean, all I had to do was show up. She just radiated this natural energy. Bob Altman never auditioned someone. He would meet you, and based on that meeting, he would decide whether or not you were the person that was right to play the role. And he always liked to say it was all about behavior. Well, Shelley’s behavior was utterly authentic. There was never anything fake about her.
I don’t recall having conversations about acting. It’s always been my least favorite subject, and I suspect it was Shelley’s as well. I don’t recall sitting around talking about finding our characters, and Bob wouldn’t indulge that kind of conversation either. That wasn’t what he did. He wanted to create an environment where you were free to simply behave, and that’s how he got what he got. And he got it from everyone with whom he worked — whether they were highly technically accomplished and approached their craft from that place, or whether they were much more naturalistic. He created a safe place for you to bring everything you had, but also somewhere you were free to fall on your face if that would get you to the next moment, which might be exquisite.
I saw her in “3 Women” after we had worked together and she was astonishing — absolutely breathtaking. I remember Bob’s comment was, “Shelley Duvall has arrived.” And he was right. He had recognized very early on the gift that she possessed, and he knew how to how to make use of it. With Shelley it was all instinct. There was no craft. That’s tremendously valuable. Shelley used to quote Bob saying, “Don’t ever take lessons.” Boy, Bob was right.
Audiences recognized how real she was, you know. Human beings have an instinct for truth, and we tend to gravitate towards people who are truthful and sincere and away from people who are being false and phony. Well, Shelley was just truth, all the time. That’s what we saw on screen. Shelley had a gift, no two ways about it. She had the instinct and the interest to explore a character, and to be believable in something like “3 Women” and then to go and do something really out there like Olive Oyl. What a range, what a legacy.
