Shelley Duvall, the actress who starred in seven movies directed by her mentor, Robert Altman and avoided the ax wielded by an unhinged Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” died at 75 years old. Her partner, Dan Gilroy, said Duvall had been in hospice and bedridden for the last few months due to complications from diabetes, adding that Duvall died in her sleep. Gilroy, her life partner since 1989, said, “She’s gone after much suffering. I can’t tell you how much I miss her.”

Duvall is best known for her roles in “The Shining” with Jack Nicholson and “Popeye” with Robin Williams. Before she fled Hollywood for her native Texas in the mid-1990s, Duvall had a thriving career as a versatile, one-of-a-kind actress and head of her own production company, Think Entertainment, which created star-studded, innovative children’s programming for cable television that netted her two Emmy Award nominations. While attending junior college in her hometown of Houston, Duvall was discovered by Altman staff members and talked into taking a screen test. She then made her onscreen debut as a teenage seductress and Astrodome tour guide, Suzanne Davis, in “Brewster McCloud.” A decade later, Duvall sang and starred opposite Robin Williams as the iconic comic-strip character Olive Oyl, the strong-willed damsel in distress, in Altman’s live-action adaptation of “Popeye.”

In between, the childlike star collaborated with Altman as a mail-order bride in “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” the woman who has a Mississippi romance with bank robber Keith Carradine in “Thieves Like Us,” the groupie L.A. Joan, fond of hot pants and platform shoes, in “Nashville,” the wife of President Grover Cleveland in “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” or “Sitting Bull’s History Lesson,” and as Millie Lamoureaux, a fantasizing attendant at a Palm Springs health spa for older people, in “3 Women.”

Asked by The New York Times in 1977 why she chose to keep working with Altman, she said: “He offers me damn good roles. None of them have been alike. He has a great confidence in me and a trust and respect for me, and he doesn’t put any restrictions on me or intimidate me, and I love him. I remember the first advice he ever gave me: ‘Don’t take yourself seriously.’ Sometimes, I find myself feeling self-centered, and then all of a sudden, that bit of advice will pop into my head, and I’ll laugh.” She returned to acting in 2022 after two decades away with a role in “The Forest Hills.” Duvall married Bernie Sampson during the filming of “Brewster McCloud,” but they divorced after four years in 1974, soon after they arrived in Los Angeles.

She later dated musician Paul Simon, whom she met in New York around the time of “Annie Hall” (he also had a cameo in the movie). They lived together on Central Park West until he left her for her friend, Carrie Fisher. (She said he broke the news to her as she was about to board the Concorde to London to work on “The Shining,” and she cried during the entire flight.)

Duvall also lived with Stan Wilson, who played Oscar the barber in “Popeye,” before meeting singer-drummer Gilroy, a member of the pop group Breakfast Club who had been Madonna’s boyfriend. They fell for each other after starring in the 1990 Disney Channel movie “Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme.” Survivors include her brothers, Scott, Stewart and Shane