One reason to love Halloween is that one of my favourite films, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, will be shown across the country (accompanied by Matt Wells’s Work & Play: A Short Film About The Shining).
Danny Lloyd, who played Danny Torrance, the boy zooming around the Overlook hotel on the tricycle, has also given an interview. Now 45 and a biology professor in Kentucky, Lloyd, a regular kid when cast, says that he has many great memories and one sad one – a broken promise that he’d be given the tricycle at the end of filming (“Redrum!” indeed).
Lloyd also said that, although he got no further with acting, he always felt that he’d “won the lottery” with The Shining and didn’t envy child stars of today.
What a great attitude and also what a contrast. In 1980, Lloyd was pining for a tricycle; these days, a breakthrough child star would be eyeing up a Netflix series at least. And good luck to them, but I’m with Lloyd. He wasn’t in any old film, he was in the film – a masterpiece that is still remembered nearly 40 years later; as of course is he.
