Playing Jack’s kid in The Shining put me through college… but I ended up a pig farmer

EVEN if he lost that beard, you might never guess that Dan Lloyd once starred in one of the scariest horror movies ever made.

Dan was five when he was thrust into the spotlight as wide-eyed, bushy-haired Danny Torrance, a kid with psychic abilities, in supernatural chiller The Shining.

Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film was based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name. And just recently its hotly anticipated sequel, Dr Sleep, was
launched in bookshops.

Dr Sleep catches up with Danny, who is now an adult working in a hospice and using his special powers to help give dying patients a peaceful end.

Asked why he decided to revisit his character, King said:
“People kept asking me, ‘Whatever happened to that kid from The Shining?’”

The Sun can answer the other question on movie fans’ lips and reveal what happened to the child actor who helped create the spooky smash.

We tracked Dan down to his home in rural Kentucky, USA, to discover he was forced to swap Hollywood for a humble life in America’s midwest.

The money he earned from The Shining helped put him through college, yet he ended up working in Walmart and even as a pig farmer before becoming  science teacher.

Dan, now 48, reveals: “There’s a feeling I didn’t like the movie and I wanted nothing to do with acting.

“But really the truth is I kept trying for several years and I stopped at about 14 with almost no success.

“I’m glad I was in The Shining. It just wasn’t something that panned out and I decided to go back to being a regular kid and school.

“I worked at the local Walmart, I also worked on a hog farm driving a tractor and working with the hogs.

“A Hollywood life probably wouldn’t have been for me anyway.

“I’m proud to come from the midwest — that’s my upbringing and that’s where I’m comfortable.

“I’m 48 now and I teach biology for a living. So I definitely tried but I’m happy the way things went.”

Kubrick’s film concerns recovering alcoholic writer Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, who takes a job as an off-season caretaker with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their son Danny at the isolated Overlook hotel.

Young Danny has psychic abilities — known as “shining” — and has visions of gruesome secrets from the hotel’s past. Meanwhile Jack — tormented by evil spirits lurking in the hotel — goes mad, with devastating consequences.

Today Dan rarely talks about his role in the classic horror film.

In fact, since moving to the small farm outside Louisville 12 years ago — where he lives with his wife and three children, two of whom are from her
previous relationship — he deliberately kept silent about The Shining.

He feared it might disrupt his job teaching at the local college.

He explains: “Once you decide not to take that career path then you’ve got to
live in the real world and try to maintain a normal life.

“When the schoolkids quiz me about my past, I’ll say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ — with a smile on my face.

“I still get the occasional call from fans who recite my famous line ‘Redrum’ — murder spelled backwards — before hanging up.

“Ninety-nine per cent of the time it’s fine, just occasionally. But when something comes up, like Stephen King releasing this second book, I will
start getting prank calls.

“It’s not something I want to encourage. I have to be a professional and earn a living.”

Dan was four when his parents heard a radio advert about casting for The
Shining and sent in his photo. He beat thousands of other American youngsters to the part.

Dan says: “I think my parents did it because I was just always hamming it up around the house and trying to be the centre of attention.”

The Lloyd family were flown to London and put up in a flat in Hampstead for
the whole of 1978 while the movie was filmed in Elstree, Herts.

In one famous scene Danny rides his tricycle through the lonely corridors of the haunted Overlook hotel and comes across terrifying ghost twin girls, played by Brits Lisa and Louise Burns.

Yet Kubrick shielded young Dan from the terror and bloodshed on set. In fact, the youngster was not even aware that he was making a horror film.

Dan says: “I was five and to be able to ride your bike inside was a great thing. I didn’t see all the blood and them hacked to death, thankfully.

“When we were making the movie I wasn’t told it was a scary movie and it wasn’t shot in order, so it was hard to make the story out anyway - especially for a five-year-old.”

He remembers wandering on set during the famous scene when Jack Nicholson hacks down a door with an axe, yelling: “Here’s Johnny!”

And how, when Nicholson caught sight of him, he quickly made a joke of it. Dan says: “We saw him chopping down that door with the axe and he was doing some major acting.

“But then he saw us and came over and started hopping around with his axe like a tomahawk. It was very funny. He was probably just trying to break the mood, he was a lot of fun.”

Shelley Duvall would later invite Dan and his family to swim at her rented house, where stars such as Art Garfunkel would be hanging out. And director Kubrick kept in touch long after the film wrapped, even sending them Christmas cards.

Dan says: “He called me after my high school graduation and I remember him congratulating me on my good school work. He was a great guy and when they say he was a film genius I agree. He took great care of me and I have nothing but good memories.”

Dan also recalls playing on some strange-looking props at Elstree, which turned out to be from Star Wars.

A year after The Shining was released, Dan attended a special edited screening.

He laughs: “It was scenes with me in it that were appropriate for my age, so I don’t think it lasted long.

“I watched a longer version at 12 but first saw the full film at 16 when some high school friends rented it out.

“It’s never been scary to me. I understand where the movie is scary, but I just personally don’t find it scary because I saw it behind the scenes.

“I’m not a big horror fan — I like funny films and documentaries.”

If anything, his kids, aged 14, 12 and three, tease him about his famous role.

Dan says: “If it comes on TV we will watch a few minutes — and usually the kids will make fun of that haircut!”

Additional reporting: PETE SAMSON

Other kids who faced frights

LINDA BLAIR in The Exorcist, 1973: After she played possessed child Regan aged just 13, Linda starred in dozens of slasher movies. Now 61 she is a vegan, humanitarian and animal rights activist.

HARVEY STEPHENS in The Omen, 1976: He was six when he played devil child Damien. Now 49, Harvey customises jet-skis and is a property developer. He once had a car repair bill which cost £666.

HEATHER O’ROURKE in Poltergeist, 1982: The cute five-year-old played Carol Anne in Steven Spielberg’s trilogy. She died at 12 of cardiac
arrest. Her tomb is a stop on “Haunted Hollywood” tours.

ALEX VINCENT in Child’s Play, 1988: Now 39 and a poet, he played Andy – a kid with a killer doll, Chucky.