‘Whatever happened to that kid from The Shining?” For years, horror fans pestered Stephen King about the fate of little Danny Torrance, the boy with psychic abilities who survived the Overlook Hotel. So much so that King eventually wrote a sequel, 2013’s Doctor Sleep. It’s a question that crops up on the internet too, about Danny Lloyd, the child actor with the pudding-bowl haircut who played Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation. On IMDb, Lloyd has just one other acting credit after The Shining (a long-forgotten TV drama about Watergate). Where did he disappear to? “I once read that I had six kids and was a pig farmer,” he says, chuckling on the phone from his home. “That’s not entirely accurate.”
For the record, Lloyd – who goes by Dan rather than Danny these days – is a biology professor at a community college in Kentucky. He did work on a farm to pay his way through university, “but where I’m from in the midwest, that’s where the odd jobs are, on farms”. And he’s got four children, not six – the eldest two are teenagers and tease him mercilessly about his haircut in The Shining.
Nothing about Lloyd screams Hollywood. In photos, he looks like your average 45-year-old guy, clean cut with a neatly trimmed beard. Chatting on the phone, he is pure midwestern wholesomeness, his expressions running the gamut from “oh boy” to “gosh”. Because he rarely gives interviews, gossip has swirled that he hates The Shining and feels like it’s wrecked his life. Any truth there? “I don’t do many interviews. But when I do, I try to make it clear, The Shining was a good experience. I look back on it fondly. What happened to me was I didn’t really do much else after the film. So you kind of have to lay low and live a normal life.”
In his early days as a teacher – long after he had quit acting – Lloyd learned fast that being the kid from The Shining was not a fact he needed to share with pupils looking for chinks in his authority. “It was disruptive in class, so that’s when I began to really play it down.” Were the kids waggling their fingers hissing “Redrum”? He laughs good-naturedly. “Yes. Very occasionally, but enough for me to know I had to downplay it. As a teacher, you’re supposed to be in control.”
Lloyd was four when his father, a railroad worker, heard a call-out for auditions on local radio. Kubrick had also placed adverts in Illinois newspapers: “Seeking boy for a film. Between five and seven years of age. No previous acting experience necessary.” Why did his dad think he could act? “Well, he told me that I was always running around trying to get attention, so he sent off my photo. I think he did it as a joke, really.” But, after five or six auditions he landed the role – Kubrick’s personal assistant called the house in the middle of Lloyd’s fifth birthday. (The director later said that he’d been impressed with the little boy’s ability to concentrate.)
The entire family upped sticks to London – Lloyd, his mum, dad and older brother Mike – for what they were told would be a 17-week shoot. Inevitably, filming on The Shining overran, to almost a year, as extreme perfectionist Kubrick shot take after take (he forced poor Shelley Duvall to redo the axe scene a record-breaking 127 times). “We didn’t know what we were getting into,” says Lloyd. “But I think if you were to ask each once of us individually, we’d do it again.”
At the time, aged five, he had no idea The Shining was a horror film – Kubrick decided not to tell him the plot. He thought it was drama about a family who lived in a hotel. Kubrick was an imposing presence, a big slab of a man with a reputation for being difficult and exacting. What did Lloyd make of him? “Stanley was great. I remember him playing ball with me, playing catch, stuff like that. He was a big guy with a beard, but I don’t remember ever being scared of him or intimidated or anything.”
Unlike Duvall, he has fond memories from the set: eating peanut butter sandwiches with Lisa and Louise Burns, the twins who played the creepy Grady sisters; an egg hunt Kubrick organised at Easter for the kids. And while the rest of us might remember little Danny pedalling like the wind along the corridors of the Overlook, hyperventilating in terror at the horrors of room 237, what stuck for Lloyd was the excitement of being allowed to ride a tricycle indoors. Although it came with a lesson in the hollowness of grownup promises. A crew member offered to send him the tricycle after the movie: “I was waiting and waiting for it, but it never came.”
Kubrick and his team protected him from the scary stuff, Lloyd says. In one scene, where Wendy runs screaming through the hotel with Danny in her arms, Duvall carried a lifesize doll. “I specifically remember I was banned from the set for the entire time Scatman Crothers was being axed,” he says laughing. There is something nice and Tom Hanks-y about his measured tone and efforts not to say anything mean or controversial.
I read that he accidentally walked in on Jack Nicholson filming “Here’s Johnny!” (voted the scariest scene movie history a few years ago). Is that true? “Yes, but not the actual ‘Here’s Johnny’ bit. Jack was out in the hallway with the axe. He was having fun and goofing off. I think it was a plastic axe he had. Both my parents were there and we were laughing. That wasn’t scary.”
One of his costumes, a hand-knitted Apollo 11 jumper, has provided conspiracy theorists with ammunition for their hypothesis that Kubrick filled The Shining with clues that he had helped the US government to fake the moon landing in 1969. Lloyd laughs drily when I ask if believes any of the Shinologists’s theories? “Honestly, no. I don’t think there’s any basis to any of it really. I think it’s just people being such fans of Kubrick and trying to explain some of the things that are almost unexplainable. Why did he do this? Why he did do that? But no, I don’t buy into any of the conspiracies.” For years after the film, Kubrick sent the Lloyd family cards at Christmas, and telephoned around his graduation from high school: “He was interested in how I was doing in school. It was very nice of him to take time.”
About a year after its release Lloyd was shown a 10-minute kiddie version of The Shining at a local cinema. He was 10 or 11 before he finally saw the real deal. Did it scare him? “No. For me when I watch The Shining, it’s like watching a home movie. I understand how it scares people. I think it’s an entertaining movie, don’t get me wrong. But I look back on it with so many memories.” These days he prefers watching documentaries to horror films.
So what happened after The Shining? Where did he go? Lloyd continued to audition for roles “but with no success really”. He finally quit when he was 13 or 14. Did he find the rejection upsetting? “No, I wouldn’t say it was upsetting. I always enjoyed it. It was exciting. But 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. They were never stage parents. They made sure I had a normal upbringing.”
I wonder if things might have turned out different today? The breakout child stars from Stranger Things have been plastered over magazines, already joining the celebrity hoopla. “I think that’s entirely possible. But I’m quite happy with how things went, really. I feel like I pretty much hit the lottery with the The Shining. I have seen those kids from Stranger Things. That popularity must be dizzying for ’em.”
So, no regrets? “No. I don’t regret trying acting. When I decided to stop, I don’t regret that either. At the end of the day, it’s not a huge deal. Well, it is and it isn’t. I still have to grade the tests at school, get the kids to bed. All the regular stuff.”
The Shining is in cinemas across the UK on 31 October accompanied by short film Work & Play: A Short Film About The Shining directed by Matt Wells.
Four more child stars who opted for early retirement
Peter Ostrum
Aged 12, Peter Ostrum beat thousands of hopefuls to play golden ticket-winner Charlie Bucket in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. The Oompa Loompas must have got something wrong, however; afterwards he turned down a three-movie deal and became vet for large animals. He lives in rural New York, and never acted again after his debut.
Mara Wilson
Hollywood could not get enough Mara Wilson (Mrs Doubtfire, Matilda) when she was an adorable seven-year-old. But when Wilson hit her teenage years, the phone stopping ringing and she became the target of confidence-crushing scrutiny of her appearance (a film critic called her “odd looking” at 13). Wilson is now a writer and playwright. Last year she published a memoir about life as a child star.
Mary Badham
Mary Badham was a tomboyish nine-year-old when she was cast as Scout in the film of To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite not being able to cry on demand during a crucial scene with Gregory Peck (the crew had to blow onion juice in her eye) Badham picked up an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. After a couple more films, she quit acting at 14 and later worked as an art restorer.
Jeff Cohen
Fancy having Chunk from the Goonies as your lawyer? For fans of the film, he will always be remembered for lifting his Hawaiian shirt at the gate of Mikey Walsh’s house to do the truffle shuffle. But these days Jeff Cohen works behind the scenes in Hollywood as an entertainment attorney. “I didn’t give up acting. Acting gave me up,” he later said. The roles dried up as he hit puberty.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion