Shelley Duvall‘s July 2024 passing from complications of diabetes is devastating, as we’ve all loved her for decades. Although she has spoken here and there about her life, we all know the (terrible) reason why she didn’t talk to the media or make any public statements for several years. Now, with the horrible news that she is gone, we want to know more about her.
Before she took a break from 2002 to 2023 and didn’t star in movies, Shelley Duvall had an amazing career including Roxanne, Annie Hall, Popeye, and, of course, The Shining. Along with watching the 2023 horror movie The Forest Hills if we haven’t yet, we want to learn more about Duvall’s family.
Did Shelley Duvall have children?
Shelley Duvall doesn’t have any kids. We do know she was in a long-term relationship with Dan Gilroy, who is the band Breakfast Club’s lead singer, from 1989 to 2024. While she didn’t have children of her own, she had three brothers named Stewart, Shane, and Scott.
The actress doesn’t seem to have spoken about not having kids in interviews, and we don’t know the specifics around this decision, which can be heartbreaking and complex.
But while Duvall wasn’t a parent herself, she starred in several projects aimed at kids. One of the most memorable was Faerie Tale Theatre, the ’80s TV show that she conceived, executive produced, hosted, and narrated. If any of us were lucky enough to watch this, we remember that she also played classic fairy tale characters such as Rapunzel. She seemed to really love telling these kinds of stories. Before the series took shape, she told Roger Ebert in 1980 that she owned Victorian children’s books, and thought creating a TV fairy tale trilogy would be fun.
In a 1991 Los Angeles Times profile of the actress, senior vice president of Showtime Dennis Johnson said “I think Shelley has not forgotten her experience as a child, and how safe and rewarding it was.” Johnson also said she was “recreating the childhood world of constant reading.” Her caring nature and empathy with children is just another reason why we miss her. We’re all Shelley’s kids.
