Everybody loves those “Where Are They Now?” television shows. It seems like there’s plenty of child actors who fall into that category and end up on a show like that sooner or later. Many of them had their time in the limelight and then faded away into adulthood with a great deal of baggage to lug around. Several continued with their acting careers and are still successful. There are those lucky few who have escaped both of these fates and just moved on to do other things with their lives.
Blastr reports Stephen King is busy writing a sequel to his 1979 novel “The Shining.” The book will focus on a grown-up Danny Torrance, who has been left emotionally scarred after the events in “The Shining.” He now works for a hospice and is being stalked by a group of psychic energy vampires who are led by a woman named Rose and call themselves The Tribe. They move around draining the powers from people with special abilities like Danny.
The book is titled “Dr. Sleep” and probably won’t see the light of day until 2013. As soon as I read this news, a question entered my mind: Where is Danny Lloyd, the little boy who so wonderfully portrayed the freaky little kid in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film version of “The Shining?”
Everybody remembers the disturbingly calm little boy riding his big wheel through the corridors of the Overlook Hotel and talking with his finger. What many people don’t know is when little Danny Lloyd was awarded the part of Danny Torrance in “The Shining,” he had no idea what he was acting in. The entire time he was filming “The Shining,” the 6-year-old was told the movie was a drama. He didn’t know they were shooting a horror film at all.
Danny didn’t stick with acting very long. He appeared in one more TV movie as a young G. Gordon Liddy in 1982’s “Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy.” This was the final role anyone would see him in before he quit acting and decided to become a science teacher.
Dan (as he likes to be called now) Lloyd is now a 38-year-old science teacher and college professor of biology. The former child actor has done well for himself and now lives in the Louisville, Kentucky, area. It’s common knowledge to his students that he doesn’t like to discuss “The Shining” very much.
“[Danny Lloyd is] a wonderful instructor, and has a great love of teaching — although we dare not ask him about his ‘Shining’ experience. He doesn’t like to talk about it,” one anonymous student stated, according to Former Child Star Central.
Apparently Lloyd does have a price. In 2009, he showed up, took pictures with fans, and signed photos of himself as Danny Torrance in “The Shining” at the Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville. Before you start yelling sell-out, let it be known that all the proceeds of his autograph purchases were donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Convention attendee V. Sarabande commented that Lloyd “was very nice and he’s very private.” That’s a great cause for him to make an appearance for.
I guess it’s safe to say that with his apparent disdain for being tied to the role he played in “The Shining,” Lloyd wouldn’t be interested in making a return to acting to reprise the role of Danny Torrance as an adult. It’s a given that Stephen King will have the rights to a movie version of “The Shining” sequel sold before the book even sees publishing.
You can see video of Dan Lloyd at the Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville, Kentucky, right here.
For more articles by Eric Shirey, check out:
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Interview with ‘Creature’ Actor Mehcad Brooks
Eric Shirey is the founder and editor of Rondo Award nominated movie news websites MovieGeekFeed.com and TheSpectralRealm.com. His work has been featured on Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! TV, Associated Content from Yahoo!, DC Comics, StarWars.com, KISSOnline.com, and other national entertainment websites. Eric has interviewed and worked with actors like Harrison Ford, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Brooke Shields, Brendan Fraser, Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Gene Simmons, Ashley Tisdale, Selena Gomez and many more.
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