The Only Main Actors Still Alive From Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

Stephen King may have hated Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “The Shining,” but the author’s denunciation didn’t stop the film from becoming a horror classic. In fact, “The Shining” transcended any sort of genre confines to become one of Kubrick’s most celebrated and important works. It helped, of course, that the director had a star of Jack Nicholson’s magnitude leading his picture. The actor was at the height of his career at the time, having already fronted two of his best-known films in 1974’s “Chinatown” and 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The film he made prior to teaming up with Kubrick, 1978’s “Goin’ South,” wasn’t exactly a triumph, but Nicholson was firmly established as an A-lister by the time he played Jack Torrance.

Flanking this megastar were Shelley Duvall as Jack’s wife, Wendy Torrance; Danny Lloyd as the couple’s son, Danny “Doc” Torrance; and Scatman Crothers as the Overlook Hotel’s head chef, Dick Hallorann, who is later revealed to have the same telepathic abilities as Danny. Otherwise, a story about a family isolated in a shuttered hotel for the winter didn’t need much more of a cast. There was hotel manager Stuart Ullman, who appears at the beginning of the film as played by Barry Nelson. Ghostly waiter Delbert Grady was portrayed by Philip Stone while Joe Turkel played the similarly spectral bartender, Lloyd.

Sadly, since “The Shining” debuted back in 1980, most members of this venerable ensemble have passed away. Scatman Crothers died just six years after the film’s 1986 debut, while Duvall passed away in 2024 at the age of 75. We’ve also since lost Nelson, Stone, and Turkel, leaving only Nicholson and Lloyd alive at the time of writing.

Jack Nicholson managed to maintain his standing as a Hollywood great throughout the decades following “The Shining.” Three years after playing Jack Torrance, he won his second Oscar for starring in James L. Brooks’ “Terms of Endearment” before earning his third for 1997’s “As Good as It Gets.” Between those projects, he delivered what many fans consider to be the definitive Joker performance in Tim Burton’s 1989 effort “Batman” (securing himself a massive payday in the process) and continued to showcase his range with films like “About Schmidt” (2002) and the oft-overlooked “The Pledge” (2001).

Today, Nicholson has disappeared from Hollywood without ever officially announcing his retirement. His final movie was 2010’s “How Do You Know,” which he made with his “Terms of Endearment” and “As Good as It Gets” collaborator James L. Brooks. Sadly, their 2010 project failed to live up to the quality of their earlier efforts, with “How Do You Know” ultimately proving to be a star-stuffed box office flop. It was hardly a fitting farewell to a cinematic legend, but the actor had his reasons for leaving the industry following the film’s commercial and critical failure.

In a 2013 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, he said, “I only want to do films that move people, films about emotions and people.” Alas, from his perspective, the movie industry no longer aligned with that goal. “I had the most chilling thought that maybe people in their 20s and 30s don’t actually want to be moved anymore,” he continued. “They may want just to see more bombs, more explosions, because that is what they have grown up with. And I’ll never do that type of movie.” Indeed, “How Do You Know” remains Nicholson’s 80th and final film.

A six-year-old Danny Lloyd shot to fame with his portrayal of Danny Torrance in “The Shining.” The character remains one of the all-time great creepy kids of cinema, even though he was really the victim in the film. Lloyd himself had no sense of the creepiness, however. He was shielded from the more scary elements of “The Shining” during filming and wasn’t shown a finished version until five or six years later. Following such a momentous start to his career, however, the young Lloyd left acting behind.

After “The Shining,” Danny Lloyd appeared in the 1982 TV movie “Will: G. Gordon Liddy,” playing a young version of the titular Watergate co-conspirator. But three years later, at the age of 13, he decided to retire from acting, telling The Guardian in 2017 that he had continued to audition but “with no success really.” He added, “As I got a little bit older, it got kind of boring. Then I had to tell my parents that I was ready to quit. Which they were fine with.” Still, he has good memories of “The Shining,” describing it as a “good experience” and saying he “look[s] back on it fondly.”

Lloyd’s post-acting life saw him ​​work on a farm to fund his university education. He then went into teaching, eventually becoming a biology professor at a Kentucky community college. Lloyd did return to acting briefly with a cameo role in Mike Flanagan’s 2019 “The Shining” sequel, “Doctor Sleep.” He was contacted by Flanagan directly on Twitter prior to shooting, and appeared as a spectator at Bradley Trevor’s baseball game in the film. Lloyd is also married and has four children who, according to his Guardian interview, enjoy teasing him about his “The Shining” haircut.