The late, great Shelley Duvall, best known as Wendy Torrance from The Shining, gave one of the finest performances of her career in Robert Altman’s chilling psychological drama 3 Women. Since Duvall sadly passed away on July 11, 2024, movie lovers have been reevaluating and reappraising her on-screen work. While The Shining will always be Duvall’s most iconic film, her best working relationship was with Altman. Duvall made her acting debut in Altman’s pitch-black comedy Brewster McCloud in 1970, kicking off a series of terrific collaborations between the actor and filmmaker.

Duvall played supporting roles in Altman’s 1971 revisionist western McCabe & Mrs. Miller and his 1974 crime caper Thieves Like Us before getting her breakthrough as L.A. Joan in his satirical musical epic Nashville in 1975. After playing Mrs. Grover Cleveland in 1976’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, Duvall finally scored a starring role in an Altman film when she played Millie Lammoreaux in his unsettling 1977 psychological drama 3 Women. This is one of Duvall’s greatest performances, and it’s a must-see for fans of the psychological thrills of The Shining.

Shelley Duvall Gave One Of Her Most Acclaimed Performances In Robert Altman’s 3 Women

Millie is friendly and outgoing, but her incessant chatter alienates everyone around her

The concept for 3 Women came to Altman in a dream (via Criterion). While his wife was ailing in hospital, Altman was suffering through a restless night and dreamt that he was in the Californian desert, making a movie about identity theft with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek. Although the dream didn’t give him a proper storyline, when he awoke from the dream, he immediately wanted to make the film. Inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Altman wrote a story treatment, got the project greenlit at 20th Century Fox, and recruited Duvall and Spacek to round out his literal dream cast.

The movie revolves around the increasingly bizarre relationship between a woman named Millie, played by Duvall, her teenage roommate and co-worker Pinky, played by Spacek, and a middle-aged pregnant woman named Willie, played by Janice Rule. Millie is aggressively outgoing and a relentless chatterbox; she’s kind to everyone she meets, but her incessant chatter alienates her neighbors and co-workers. Duvall plays the bitter tragedy of this character – that she just wants to connect with people, but ends up driving them away – perfectly.

3 Women Perfected Altman’s Early-Career Exploration Of Identity

Altman explored the same themes in Images and That Cold Day in the Park

Like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, Altman never confined himself to one genre. He made dark comedies like M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud, hyperlink epics like Nashville and Short Cuts, satirical murder mysteries like Gosford Park and The Long Goodbye, and anti-westerns like McCabe & Mrs. Miller. One genre that Altman kept coming back to early in his career was the psychological thriller. In 1969, he made That Cold Day in the Park, about a lonely woman who takes in a troubled young man. In 1972, he made Images, about a children’s author suffering disturbing hallucinations at a remote vacation home.

Both Images and That Cold Day in the Park explored themes of identity, obsession, and personality disorder. Images’ Cathryn is haunted by her own doppelgänger, and That Cold Day in the Park’s Frances fixes her entire identity to the young man under her care; 3 Women completed a sort of unofficial trilogy by exploring these familiar themes in even more depth. Millie attaches herself to Pinky in the same way that Frances attaches herself to “The Boy.” The real-life sequences become increasingly entangled with the dream sequences, making it hard to tell reality from fantasy.

Duvall Shares Great Chemistry With Sissy Spacek & Janice Rule

The central trio effortlessly carries the movie

Duvall shares spectacular on-screen chemistry with her co-stars Spacek and Rule in 3 Women. This lead trio of actors effortlessly carries the movie, no matter how confounding the plot gets. Duvall’s Millie is hilariously contrasted as the polar opposite of Spacek’s Pinky and Rule’s Willie; Millie is a textbook extrovert, while Pinky and Willie are textbook introverts. Whereas Millie is relentlessly outspoken, Pinky and Willie are both shy, awkward, and softly spoken, leaving a conversational vacuum that Millie is more than happy to fill.

When it comes to Duvall’s chemistry with her co-stars, her tense dynamic with Jack Nicholson in The Shining often comes up. And that is an incredible dynamic, perfectly capturing the toxicity and hopelessness of a broken marriage. But Duvall’s dynamic with Spacek in 3 Women is just as believable as a fractured friendship as her dynamic with Nicholson in The Shining is believable as a fractured marriage.

Source: Criterion