Legendary Actor Robert Duvall Dies

After earning a bachelor’s degree in drama at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, in 1953, Duvall served in the U.S. Army for a year before studying acting with famed teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. There, he made friends with Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. He performed in New York in the ‘50s, supporting himself with day jobs at Macy’s and the post office, and broke into television in 1959 with an appearance on the Armstrong Circle Theater. Duvall continued with guest shots on Playhouse 90 and in anthology series such as The Twilight Zone, Naked City and Route 66 into the ‘60s. ​

His debut film role came as the mysterious and misunderstood Boo Radley in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a part he got on the recommendation of playwright Horton Foote after his performance in Foote’s one-act play, The Midnight Caller. Returning to the theater, he won an Obie Award for A View from the Bridge in 1965. But film work quickly took over with 1966’s The Chase, in which he co-starred with Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando and Robert Redford, and 1969’s True Grit with John Wayne. In 1970, Duvall again turned heads as Maj. Frank Burns in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H.​

Then came the role of the loyal legal advisor and adopted son Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972), which earned him his first Academy Award nomination and led to tremendous career momentum, including The Godfather Part II (1974). Duvall would go on to receive additional Oscar nominations for 1979’s Apocalypse Now (with his classic line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”) and 1981’s The Great Santini before winning the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of the alcoholic country music star Mac Sledge in 1983’s Tender Mercies, a role his friend Foote wrote for him. ​

Duvall and his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza. He met her in Argentina and they married in 2005.

Michael Buckner/Getty Images for SXSW

Duvall received three more Oscar nominations, for 1997’s The Apostle (a self-financed film he wrote in six weeks but which took 15 years to make), A Civil Action (1998) and The Judge (2014). For the latter, according to The Guardian, he became the oldest person to be nominated for a supporting-actor Oscar. He was 84. ​

The academy recognition, along with four Golden Globe awards, two Primetime Emmy awards and a Screen Actors Guild award, cemented Duvall’s reputation as an “actor’s actor” who didn’t so much perform his roles as disappear inside them. His understated, naturalistic style, devoid of showy mannerisms, worked especially well in Westerns, culminating with the 1989 Lonesome Dove miniseries, often cited as the pinnacle of his work in the genre. “When we finished shooting,” he told American Cowboy magazine, “I said, ‘I can retire now, I’ve done something I can be proud of.’ Playing Augustus McCrae was kind of like my Hamlet. It may be my favorite role.”​

While director Francis Ford Coppola called Duvall “one of the four or five best actors in the world,” according to the INSP Network website, the actor tended to demystify his craft, saying in a 2010 New York magazine interview, “Talking and listening, what we’re doing right now. That’s acting.” ​

Nonetheless, he was a remarkably assured performer, and he earned a reputation for being difficult. “A lot of people say I’m a prick,” Duvall told Details magazine in 2007, “but you have to fight for things.” In addition to acting and writing, he produced and directed. “Everything I did, write, direct, it was all an extension of myself as an actor,” TCM reported him saying. “When you act, it’s a wonderful thing, but almost it’s more fulfilling overall when you direct.”​

Duvall (center, with Robert Downey Jr., left, and Dax Shepherd) became the oldest person to be nominated for a supporting-actor Oscar for his work on 2014's "The Judge." He was 84 at the time.

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

One of Duvall's five directorial pieces was the 2002 film Assassination Tango, co-starring Pedraza, an Argentinian whom he married in 2005 after meeting her in a Buenos Aires bakery. She was his fourth wife and 41 years his junior. He had a sense of humor about the age difference, as he shared with AARP in 2014. “When I met my wife, who is very young, she said to me, ‘What will it be like to reach old age together?’ I replied, ‘I’m old now!’ Her father said he didn’t know whether to call me father or son.” ​

The actor had no children, but in 2001, he and his wife founded The Robert Duvall Children’s Fund to help families in Argentina. He also supported the Texas Children’s Cancer Center.​

In a 2014 AARP interview, Duvall advocated spending time with young people as you age: “They give you a sense of excitement,” he said, “of what’s to come.”