After Popeye, it's Olivia Paletto who left us orphans.

For a generation of moviegoers, Shelley Duvall has been a defining figure. From his first film in 1970, to Stanley Kubrick’s Shining, where he faced off against Jack Nicholson’s madness, and Robert Altman’s Popeye, where he played Robin Williams’ Olivia Paltrow, both of which had premiered ten years earlier, Duvall was associated with some of the best cinema to hit theaters at the time.

He passed away on Thursday at the age of 75 due to complications from diabetes. But mentally, he doesn't seem to be doing well either. He recently returned to work, but in an obscure horror film that, barring any mistakes, didn't even make it to our theaters. Before that, she hadn't directed a film since 2002. It's been a long time since Shelley Duvall became the same 70s and 80s “baby” moviegoers of the time, and will forever remember.

The young Duvall worked as a cosmetics saleswoman until she was discovered at a party by a talent scout. Robert Altman was looking for an actress for his new film and was so enamored with her that he cast her no less than seven times.

But it was mainly in Altman's films “Thieves Like Us,” “Nashville” and especially “Three Women” that his talent and unique way of acting came to the fore. This last title, in which he starred alongside Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, a very strange picture of America at the time, earned him an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Shelley Duvall suffered through her unique physicality and physique. With a tall, thin, extremely thin body, a face of some indescribable beauty, others of captivating ugliness, and those eyes that we now miss so much, Shelley Duvall was thrust into the same kind of strange, out-of-this-world character. A box of apparent naivety that American cinema was gradually dispensing with.

In that pivotal year of 1980, Stanley Kubrick directed it. Some say he was butchered, not directed, with the true legend perhaps being the 127-take baseball bat scene! Duvall, however, ended up saying that he learned more from Kubrick than from all the other directors he had ever worked with. Soon after, Altman said goodbye, with some arguing that the role he was born to play was Olivia Paletto in Popeye, also played by the late Robin Williams.

Shelley Duvall also had time to play a small character in Woody Allen's “Annie Hall”, and would also have important roles in films such as Terry Gilliam's “The Time Thieves”, a Monty Python movie, or Fred Schepisi's “Roxanne” with Steve Martin. Early in her career, Tim Burton cast her as Susan Frankenstein in his short film “Frankenweenie”.

But Shelley Duvall realized that cinema could offer her little and turned to television, especially the world of children and fantasy, which suited her tastes very much. Thus, she is the producer, presenter and occasional performer of the series “Theatre of the Fairy Tale” where tales such as “Aladdin”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” or “The Three Little Pigs” were recreated in more than 26 episodes.

Shelley Duvall continued to make films and produce or star in television series until the turn of the millennium. After a brief marriage, in the 1970s, she found love again with actor Dan Gilroy. He decided to isolate himself from the world, moving from Los Angeles after his house was badly damaged in an earthquake, to a ranch in Blanco, Texas. He seemed to divide his time between caring for animals and writing poetry. His character, who created poetry as he went along, is now gone.