Shelley Duvall’s eyes gleam like moonstone whenever she’s caught on camera. Her odd mouth twists around a secret before her teeth make themselves known in a lovely, blueberry pie–eating smile, and I imagine a dull halo tilting over her head before Jack Nicholson tries to ax her in half in The Shining (1980). In 2024, the reclusive actress died after two decades away from Hollywood, but that image of Duvall looking as heavenly and poppable as a soap bubble stays in my mind, and in an increasing number of horror games.

Duvall practically has a starring role in 2024 indie hit Mouthwashing, whose puddle-eyed nurse Anya was explicitly inspired by the actress, according to developer Wrong Organ. Rosemary Walten in the multimedia Five Nights at Freddy’s fan project The Walten Files likewise shares Duvall’s North Star eyes and Shetland pony hair, and fans are taking notice. As one Twitter post with over 151,000 likes says, “The People yearn for Shelley Duvall.”

To me and her many other admirers, Duvall seemed like the only woman who managed to peel herself off a storybook page, leap into the world, and flash her doll lashes. At the peak of her acting career, between Robert Altman’s 1975 drama Nashville and the end of her self-produced Faerie Tale Theatre anthology series in 1987, Duvall’s on-camera presence could only be matched by a night-blooming tuberose: fragile, enigmatic, belonging to the moon.

As Wendy Torrance in The Shining , trapped in an evil hotel with her ax-swinging husband, Duvall proves it’s possible for a person to melt like snow.

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