After graduating with a degree in journalism, Sarah Lukowski moved to Austin in 2022 and started working in the marketing department of an engineering firm. During her downtime, Lukowski, 24, enjoys shopping at the Capital City’s thrift stores, reading books, and going to see the latest movies at Alamo Drafthouse. She also spends her free time doing research and conducting interviews on a subject that has fascinated her since 2016: actress Shelley Duvall.
Lukowski is behind the internet’s Shelley Duvall Archives, a collection of social media accounts dedicated to celebrating the reclusive film star. Whether she’s addressing (speculative) lore about Duvall’s role in the horror movie classic The Shining, revealing previously unseen images of the stylish Hollywood it girl with the spidery seventies lashes, or sharing video of her life in the Hill Country, Lukowski’s posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X rack up thousands of views and millions of likes.
Duvall, who left Tinseltown for Texas after a 32-year career, has mostly avoided the spotlight for decades, though she’s considered a beloved regular at a handful of local eateries in the small towns west of I-35. But the Fort Worth-born actress, now 74, never lost the support of her most loyal fans; she also gained new ones among a younger, digitally savvy generation. Lukowski, who has Duvall’s likeness tattooed on her arm, is adept at the online art of celebrity fandom, a practice that includes the meticulous collection of images, correcting falsehoods, and curating content about a beloved star. If you’ve ever stumbled upon a viral internet post about Duvall, chances are it’s because of Lukowski, who’s been running online celebrity-focused pages for years and hopes to one day write a book about her favorite star.
“There’s always been some sort of embarrassment to it,” Lukowski said during a recent conversation. “People just always have been putting down fangirls for their interests, like ever since we’ve been young. I think that’s why I feel this thing with Shelley is different.”
One difference is that Lukowski has befriended Duvall in real life, and now regularly visits the actress at her home in the Hill Country while still running the Shelley Duvall Archive. Over a lunchtime phone call, the woman behind @shelleyduvallxo spoke about meeting her idol, going from fan to friend, and how it’s changed her online undertaking.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Texas Monthly: Why Shelley Duvall?
Sarah Lukowski: I discovered her in 2016 when I watched her in The Shining on my tiny iPhone. I remember being so enthralled by Shelley the first time she came on-screen, and I just wanted to know every single thing about her. She reminded me a lot of myself, too, even in her looks a little bit, but also personality-wise, and because she loves animals. She was always so authentic and kind. Even on-screen, she seemed to be herself and I felt a connection to her.
TM: Are you a horror fan?
SL: [The Shining] opened the door for me . . . I got into horror and “final girl” cinema [a genre trope in which a female character is the last one to confront or survive a killer]. I wrote my senior thesis in college on horror movies. It’s wild because a lot of people see Shelley as a horror actress and final girl, too, but she really isn’t. She kind of gets lumped in that category . . . She’s done so much more than [The Shining].
TM: Why did you decide to create an Instagram account dedicated to Shelley Duvall?
SL: I really loved the Hollywood Reporter piece, and it led me to rediscover her again. It did a good job of showing Shelley the person and Shelley who lives in Texas, rather than what everyone knew through tabloids . . . After I made my fan page, I was inspired by a few Sharon Tate fan pages I’ve followed on Instagram. People still celebrate the older, retired actresses. I found a lot of inspiration in that. My TikTok followed, and then Twitter. . . . Having a fan page gave me a reason to do research and dig through photos. But I feel like I know everything now, so really, I’m just posting because I like the community; it’s cool to see how everyone loves Shelley. It’s not just me.
TM: Are these your first celebrity fan pages?
SL: Shelley was not the first . . . I’ve had fan pages in the past for a bunch of people. I had a big one—this is embarrassing—for Ansel Elgort from The Fault in Our Stars. I’m a really big [Taylor Swift fan], and I’m involved in the Swiftie community on Twitter. I’ve always felt drawn to fandoms overall and the community aspect of it.
TM: A lot of people your age grew up immersed in the culture of online fandom. But Shelley Duvall and her acting career seem like unlikely subject matter for that type of content.
SL: Fandoms have been such a big part of my life, probably since I was like 11 or 12 . . . Shelley’s the first celebrity I’ve been into who is retired. Compared to Ansel Elgort, Taylor Swift, random people from American Idol that I loved and had fan pages for—that was the rise and the peak of their careers. How to navigate a fan page when there is really nothing new to post has definitely been a challenge.
Left: Archival images of Shelley Duvall. Courtesy of Sarah Lukowski
Top: Sarah Lukowski, trying on Shelley’s hat. Courtesy of Sarah Lukowski
TM: What’s your process?
SL: Last winter I went to the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London to research The Shining. I went to the [motion picture-focused] Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles. I’m doing in-person, boots-on-the-ground, research. I’m the first person to source things that have never been posted online before. I met her ex-husband Bernard Sampson last summer. He and Shelley were married in the early seventies. He had a ton of unseen photographs that had been in a warehouse all this time.
My favorite is going to eBay and searching for old magazines and newspapers, buying those and physically scanning them. I’ve discovered a lot of things that way that no one else has. At this point, people send me stuff. People are like, “Oh, I have this in my attic. Do you want it?” I’m like, yes, please send me this random book of Popeye still images. I get a lot of things that way now. Sometimes I’ve contacted photographers she’s been photographed by in the past.
TM: Have you met other Shelley Duvall fans along the way?
SL: Somehow there is a community for Shelley. My close friend, Emma, did a podcast on Shelley called Texas Twiggy. I went to L.A. last summer for the first time and I got to stay with her. So, I’ve made these relationships, which is similar to my involvement in past fandoms. I talk to a guy from Australia from time to time because he’s really into Shelley’s Faerie Tale Theatre show. Someone else commented how they grew up watching Faerie Tale Theatre in India, and that made me cry just thinking about Shelley’s reach across the world.
TM: How did you meet Shelley?
SL: Xavier Hamel is working on a documentary for Shelley called Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall. It’s been in the works for years, and when I first made my Instagram page in 2021, we connected . . . My initial contact with Shelley was in October 2022. He let me send a letter to Shelley and because I got a Shelley tattoo in summer 2022, I sent a photo of that. . . . We’ve spoken back and forth and then [after] I moved to Austin, he invited me out to meet her. This was September 2022.
TM: What was that first meeting like?
SL: We got lunch at a little diner in Johnson City. We met there because Shelley has been in Hill Country for 20 years, so she knows of all the good spots and the places to hang out. I was so nervous. I remember seeing her white Toyota 4Runner pull up. I’m like, “Oh, god, this is it.” I feel like my life did change in a way.
At that point, she’s 73. Maybe it was odd I knew so much about her, but she didn’t know anything about me. She was asking a lot about me. We sat down and had peach cobbler and your typical Texas meal at a rural diner.
She wanted to go to Starbucks. . . . Then we went to Lakeside Park in Marble Falls. It was a wild day. Within the first five minutes, it felt like I was always friends with her.
TM: What’s your relationship like now?
SL: After that first meeting, I said bye, Shelley, and she was like, “Wait, I don’t have your phone number.” So that’s how I got her phone number. But it can still be hard to reach out to her sometimes, especially if she’s not in a good mood with her health at the time. I took it slow after my first meeting with her. I didn’t really know how to approach having her number and setting up meetings with her. But ever since then, I’ve been at least trying every few weeks to call her, maybe once a month to hang out with her.
I’ve met Shelley well over ten times. I’ve had so many phone conversations with her; I just randomly Facetimed with her last week. But I think a lot of people forget, I had my fan page for a year and a half as a normal fan.
TM: How has getting to know Shelley personally changed your fan pages?
SL: I’m getting random hate comments from people. They’re like, “You’re milking your friendship with her. You’re exploiting her, you’re using her.” . . . This is a Shelley page. And of course I’m going to post about knowing her, but believe me, there are so many things people don’t know that I’m not going to put on the internet. There is a balance and a boundary I have to be careful with. . . . At the end of the day, she is a person. I do want to protect her privacy and she deserves dignity and respect. I am very cautious about that. She does know about my fan pages, too.
In the past few months, I’ve been going to her home. Again, boundaries are respected. It’s all up to Shelley. I think she likes having someone like me, who knows about her career and can have these conversations. But I try to have that level of respect and care for the situation. I’m a friend of Shelley’s, but I still like to say I’m a fan.
TM: You recently started collecting fan mail for Shelley. Why did you decide to do that?
SL: I feel like she needed more support. . . . I opened a P.O. box to bring her some joy and smiles and words of encouragement. I’ve brought her fan mail two or three times now. I usually sit next to her, open it up, read to her, and it always brings a smile to her face.
I don’t know how else she would see those words because she’s not on social media at all. . . . She used to get a ton of fan mail, so it must feel good to her to get those letters and to know she’s still appreciated, because that’s the goal. Just to make her feel like she’s loved. And there’s still people out on the internet and across the world who love her.
TM: I recently learned through your account that the Carly Rae Jepsen song “Everything He Needs” is a reference to Shelley’s song “He Needs Me” in Popeye. It all comes back to Shelley Duvall in the end.
SL: Even that “Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall” audio on TikTok [a viral looping remix of Shelley repeatedly introducing herself, usually accompanying a video of one’s outfits or makeup] is from Faerie Tale Theatre from the eighties. I showed Shelley it last year and she liked it. She said the audio could have been better because there’s some banging noise in the back. You see all these young people adopting her audio for an introduction, which I think is cute. It’s cool to show Shelley those things too. I guess all roads lead to Shelley in some capacity. She’s everywhere.
TM: Do you have a favorite memory with her?
SL: My favorite memories with her are around clothes and style because she was very much a fashionista in the seventies, eighties, nineties. She always dressed her own way. I have these platform Converse shoes and she always compliments them, saying she had shoes like that back in the day. One time I wore white cowgirl boots. She said, “That reminds me of a pair my mom gave me.” Last summer she gifted me the cutest sun hat. I think she just got it from the gas station in her town. That was so sweet. She thought of me and bought something to give to me, which is really special. I feel like that proves to me it’s a mutual, genuine relationship.
TM: If you could sum it up, what does your relationship with Shelley mean to you?
SL: It reminds me how we’re all human. We all go through trials and errors and ups and downs in our life. But at the end of the day, we still have our own passions. We’re still creative people. Shelley’s been through a lot, but she’s still so kind and compassionate. That’s really what I admire the most about her, because you can see that throughout her career, she’s still the same Shelley today.
