HOLLYWOOD TIDBITS: THE SHINING

Danny Lloyd was selected for the role of Danny Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980) because of his ability to concentrate for extended periods of time. Because Lloyd was so young, and since it was his first acting job, Stanley Kubrick was highly protective of the child. During the shooting of the movie, Lloyd was under the impression that the film he was making was a drama, not a horror movie. In fact, when Wendy carries Danny away while shouting at Jack in the Colorado Lounge, she is actually carrying a life-size dummy, so Lloyd would not have to be in the scene. He only realized the truth several years later, when he was shown a heavily edited version of the film. He did not see the uncut version of the film until he was seventeen, eleven years after he had made it.

The idea for Lloyd to move his finger when he was talking as Tony was his own. He did it spontaneously during his very first audition.

Lloyd grew up to be a professor of biology at a community college in Elizabethtown, Kentucky...