Robert Duvall, a prolific, Oscar-winning actor who shunned the glitz and won praise as one of the greatest and most versatile actors of his generation, has died at the age of 95.
Duvall’s death on Sunday was confirmed by his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a statement posted on Facebook on Monday.
Duvall shone in both lead and supporting roles and eventually became a director in a career spanning six decades. He continued acting even in the 90s.
His most memorable roles include soft-spoken, loyal mob lawyer Tom Hagen in the first two installments of “The Godfather” and crazed, surfing-mad Lt. Gen. William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now.”
The latter earned Duvall an Oscar nomination and made her a bona fide star after years of playing lesser roles. In it he said what is now one of cinema’s most famous lines.
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” his war-loving character, bare-chested, cocky and wearing a big black cowboy hat, muses as low-flying American warplanes attack the beach’s tree line with incendiary gel.
That character was originally created to be even more over-the-top, his name was initially supposed to be Colonel Carnage, but Duvall had it toned down to reflect his approach to acting.
“I did my homework,” Duvall told veteran talk show host Larry King in 2015. “I did my research.”
Duvall was a late entrant to the profession, being 31 when he gave his breakout performance as the mysterious recluse Boo Radley in the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
He played a myriad of roles, including a crooked corporate executive in “Network”, a Marine officer who treats his family like soldiers in “The Great Santini”, and a washed-up country singer in “Tender Mercies”, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar. Duvall was also nominated for an Oscar six other times.
However, Duvall often said that his favorite role was playing the grizzled, wise-cracking Texas Ranger turned cowboy Augustus McCray in the 1989 TV mini-series “Lonesome Dove”, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry.
Film critic Ellen Mancini once described Duvall as “the most technically proficient, most versatile, and most dependable actor on screen in the United States.”
In her statement, Luciana Duvall said, “To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything. His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a sumptuous meal, and holding court.”
– ‘Lots of nonsense’ –
Born in 1931, the son of a naval officer father and an amateur actress mother, Duvall studied drama before spending two years in the US Army.
He then settled in New York, where he shared an apartment with Dustin Hoffman. The pair were friends with Gene Hackman as all three worked their way up in showbiz. These were difficult times for the future stars.
“Hoffman, I, my brother, three or four other actors and singers had a place in Manhattan, Uptown, at 107th and Broadway,” Duvall told GQ in 2014.
Duvall said he has few regrets in his career.
But after one man turned down the lead role in “Jaws” because he wanted to play a salty fisherman instead, the role went to Robert Shaw.
Director Steven Spielberg told Duvall that he was too young for the role.
Duvall also admitted that he took some jobs just for the money.
“I did a lot of bullshit,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2017. “Television stuff. But I had to make a living.”
Duvall made her home in rural Virginia, where her family’s roots were, away from the glamor and nonsense of Hollywood.
He and his fourth wife, Argentinian-born Luciana Pedraza, 40 years his junior, lived in a nearly 300-year-old farmhouse. Duvall never had children.
He said that he went to New York and Los Angeles only when necessary.
“I love a good Hollywood party,” he told the Journal. “I have a lot of friends there. But I like living here.”
And Duvall says that of all his celebrated roles, his favorite was actually that of soft-hearted cowboy McCray in “Lonesome Dove.”
“He’s my ‘Hamlet,'” he told The New York Times in 2014.
“The British have Shakespeare; the French have Moliere. In Argentina they have Borges, but the Westerns are ours. I like that.”
DW/SST/SMS
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