One of Hollywood’s greatest actors, Robert Duvall was the common DNA of some of the greatest American films ever made.
From a mafia consigliere to an alcoholic country singer to multiple military veterans, the actor, who died Monday at his home in Virginia at age 95, counterintuitively disappeared into film roles that were both raw and beloved.
“You have to keep it to yourself,” he said on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in 2021. “You have to be in your temperament, not grow out of anger or weakness or whatever.”
He believed that moving too far from a given emotional taste was “overacting.”
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Robert Duvall never overacted, even when he was shirtless in the cacophonous Vietnam War zone and delivered the iconic line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
That doesn’t suggest that the man’s performance was relaxed or calm. Quite the opposite. Many of his best scenes were intense fights. It was easy to think of things that would pose a threat to him.
But as Post critic Rex Reed wrote, Duvall “always wore leather like muddy boots and was as natural as breathing.”
Born in San Diego, California, Duvall began studying acting with Sanford Meisner in New York, where he met friends Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and James Caan.
Hoffman became Uptown’s roommate.
In the 1950s, he performed on stage at the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport, Lilly, before landing his first film role as Boo Radley in 1962’s A Tale of Alabama starring Gregory Peck. Playwright Horton Foote helped cast him.
Although Boo is a silent character (his line in the book is cut from the film), Duvall, barely 30 years old, proves the power of his glare. His long stares at Scout are first frightening, then warm, and are forever tear-jerking as the young woman learns an important life lesson.
Duvall made her Broadway debut in 1966 in the play Wait Until Dark at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and went on to play numerous bit roles in television and film.
But in the 1970s, his career exploded as he appeared in a series of amazingly acclaimed films almost every year.
The first was 1970’s “M*A*S*H,” a dark comedy about the Korean War directed by Robert Altman, which was turned into a much-broadcast television series two years later.
He played the arrogant surgeon Major Frank Burns, ultimately played much more seriously than Larry Linville played him on television.
Duvall then helped pave the way for “Star Wars.” He starred in George Lucas’ directorial debut, THX 1138. This work is a dystopian science fiction film depicting a future where sex and reproduction are prohibited.
THX also opened doors for Duvall. The film was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, who soon cast Duvall as Tom Hagen, a lawyer and consigliere for the Corleone crime family, in 1972’s The Godfather, perhaps the greatest film of all time.
That glare from A Tale of Alabama returns, even more menacingly, in the scene where producer Jack Waltz berates Hagen while vehemently refusing to let Vito’s godson Johnny Fontaine appear in the film. Meanwhile, Duval’s Hagen sits there quietly eating and drinking, then politely leaves to order a severed horse head.
He was nominated for seven Oscars for The Godfather, winning his first nomination, and returned for the 1974 sequel The Godfather Part II.
This was Duvall’s coat-and-tie phase. In Sidney Lumet’s excellent “Network,” the actor played TV executive Frank Hackett, who sits behind a desk and takes on the role of head of William Holden’s tradition-bound news department struggling to get ratings.
“So from now on, have no illusions about who’s going to run this network. You’re fired!” he yelled in a tone that would have sent most normal people into uncontrollable sobs.
Duvall then took the suit to the dry cleaners.
In 1979, he took off his shirt and reunited with director Coppola to play Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in the seminal Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now. He said the “napalm” line was one of the most memorable lines ever spoken on screen, and a review in the Post said his 11-minute running time was defined by “extraordinary power.” He was nominated for an Oscar again.
Duvall finally won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1983 for Tender Mercies, a relatively tame film compared to his blistering ’70s films. He was a country music singer from Texas named Mac Sledge who was battling some personal demons. The actor sang everything himself, as his contract required.
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote, “The film contains one of his most understated performances.” “It’s mostly done with his eyes.”
Duvall would go on to make 57 more films over the course of his career, ending with 2022’s Pale Blue Eyes, but none in his 40s and 50s carried the weight of that extraordinary title.
Fans still have their favorites. His rare foray into family entertainment was in the Disney musical “Newsies,” in which he played Joseph Pulitzer. Journalists love his performance as the editor-in-chief of a tabloid newspaper based on the New York Post in Ron Howard’s hilarious “The Paper.”
However, Duvall’s personal favorite role came on the small screen as Gus McRae in the western miniseries Lonesome Dove. Perhaps because the actor grew up riding horses on his uncle’s ranch in Montana, he loved the genre.
As the years went on, he began taking on more supporting roles and focused on his personal life.
Duvall, who had no children, married his fourth wife, Argentine actress Luciana Pedraza, in 2005. He met Pedraza in Buenos Aires in 1996 while filming The Man Who Captured Eichmann.
In 1994, he purchased a 360-acre property called Burnley Farm in Plains, Virginia, after spending much of his childhood in Virginia and Maryland.
“This feels like home,” Duvall told Root Magazine. “My wife is from Argentina, but she loves Virginia and says it’s the last stop on her way to heaven.”
