One of Hollywood’s most popular character actors, Robert Duvall won one Oscar, two Emmys, and four Golden Globes during his extraordinary career.
Legendary ‘Godfather’ actor Robert Duvall dies
Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall played some unforgettable characters during his seven-decade Hollywood career.
Robert Duvall, the Academy Award-winning actor known for Hollywood classics such as “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now,” has died. He was 95 years old.
Duvall died “peacefully” at her home in Middleburg, Virginia, on February 15, her attorney confirmed. He was with his wife, Luciana Duvall.
“To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, director, and storyteller. To me, he was everything,” Luciana Duvall wrote on Facebook. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love of characters, great food, and holding court.
“In each of his many roles, Bob gave his all to the characters and the truths of the human spirit they represented. In doing so, he left a lasting and unforgettable legacy on all of us.”
During his seven-decade acting career on stage, television and film, Duvall has played an astonishing range of strong-willed characters, earning seven Oscar nominations and winning Best Actor for his role as a down-and-out country singer in 1983’s Tender Mercies. He also won two Primetime Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards for his work.
He played a wide range of unforgettable men, from Mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film The Godfather to surfing and napalm-loving Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now. In it, Duvall says, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. … It smells like victory.”
In 1979, Bull Meachum, the domineering Marine pilot he played in The Great Santini, hit the big screen and was nominated for another Oscar. For reference, that same year he appeared as General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the miniseries Ike: Era of War.
On television, he played Joseph Stalin in 1992’s Stalin, Nazi Adolf Eichmann in 1996’s The Man Who Captured Eichmann, and Texas Ranger Captain Augustus “Gus” McRae in the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove.
Still, Duvall, who was obsessed with tango dancing when he wasn’t acting, felt that all of these characters came from within.
“It has to be, you’re the one under there,” Duvall told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 2004. “You’re trying to interpret someone and let it come out of yourself.”
Born Robert Selden Duvall on January 5, 1931, to career naval officer (and later admiral) William Howard Duvall and actress Mildred Virginia, Duvall told USA TODAY in 2014 that his mother was “in charge” of his development.
“When the soldier returned, she would unconsciously give him authority to run the family until he left again,” Duvall said. “That never happened to him.”
After a brief stint in the military, Duvall began his acting career in off-Broadway plays in New York City, where he befriended and often became roommates with up-and-coming actors Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and James Caan. A memorable stage role led to Duvall’s major film debut, where he played the mute but memorable role of Boo Radley in 1962’s A Tale of Alabama.
But Duvall struggled to stand out even in key bit roles, such as the dastardly “Lucky” Ned Pepper, who had a deadly horseback battle with John Wayne’s one-eyed U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn in the classic 1969 Western “True Grit,” a role that won Wayne his only Oscar.
His breakout role was in 1972’s The Godfather as Hagen, an indecipherable Irishman who is the loyal adoptive family consigliere of the Corleone clan. Duvall reprized the role in the acclaimed 1974 sequel, The Godfather: Part II.
Described by People magazine as “Hollywood’s No. 1 No. 2 leading man,” Duvall did not appear in Coppola’s 1990 trilogy finale, The Godfather Part III, after a pay dispute compared to Al Pacino, who played family head Michael Corleone.
“If they paid Pacino twice what they paid me, that’s fine, but not three or four times as much. That’s what they did,” Duvall said on “60 Minutes” of his decision to sit out the final game.
Duvall’s most widespread acclaim was for his supporting role in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. As a shirtless Kilgore, he required his men to surf even in the midst of intense combat. Throughout his career, Duvall enjoyed telling fan stories about Kilgore’s famous lines.
“People come up to me on the street and say, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ as if I never knew that and forgot it after I said it,” Duvall said with a laugh on Bob Costas’ talk show “Later” in 1991. “It’s like, ‘Enough is enough.'”
Duvall achieved cult-level status as Texas Ranger McCray in Lonesome Dove, which was based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry.
“I remember walking into the diner one day with ‘Lonesome Dove,’ and I said, ‘Guys, we’re making the Godfather of Westerns,'” Duvall told the Los Angeles Times in 2014.
In 2021, he named the film to USA TODAY as his proudest performance. “In America, Westerns are our genre. The British have Shakespeare, the French have Molière, the Russians have Chekhov, but we have Westerns,” Duvall said.
At the 1989 Emmy Awards, the four-part series received seven wins out of 18 nominations, including Best Actor in a Miniseries for Duvall. “I told myself I could retire now. I accomplished something,” he told Esquire.
Duvall, who has been married four times, never seriously considered retiring from acting. In 2002, he starred in, wrote, produced, and directed the crime thriller Assassination Tango with his Argentinian partner Luciana Pedraza, who became Duvall’s fourth wife in 2004 and shares his birthday.
At 84, Duvall, who played beleaguered country judge Joseph Palmer in The Judge, alongside his urbane lawyer son Robert Downey, earned his seventh Oscar nomination for the unforgettable screen drama, making him the oldest actor nominated since Christopher Plummer.
Duvall rose to prominence in 2018 when he played racist Chicago political operative Tom Mulligan in Steve McQueen’s Widows. In 2021, he appeared in the high school football drama “12 Mighty Orphans,” and in 2022, he appeared in Adam Sandler’s basketball comedy “Hustle.”
The actor told Esquire that the search for the next perfect role will never end for as long as he can stand it.
“I’ve done a lot of crap, but I’ve also done a lot of good things,” Duvall said. “You always wish you had one more, it’s like a great jumping horse rider is always looking for a horse. of horse. “
Contributor: Patrick Ryan
