According to his wife on Monday, Robert Duvall, who portrayed a surfing-mad colonel in “Apocalypse Now” and the slick mob lawyer in “The Godfather,” passed away at the age of 95.
Luciana Duvall, his wife, confirmed his death on Sunday.
We bid farewell to my spouse, a dear friend, and one of the greatest performers of our time yesterday. “Bob died quietly at home,” she wrote.
Blunt-talking, productive, and glitz-averse, Duvall had six nominations for an Oscar and won for best actor. He excelled in leading and supporting parts during his 60-year career before going on to become a director. In his nineties, he continued to perform.
To the world, he was a filmmaker, a storyteller, and an Academy Award-winning actor. He was just everything to me,” Luciana Duvall remarked. “His love of characters, a good meal, and holding court were the only things that could rival his passion for his craft.”
In the 1983 film “Tender Mercies,” Duvall played a washed-up country musician, earning him an Academy Award.
However, his most notable portrayals also featured the fierce Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now” and the quiet, devoted mob consigliere Tom Hagen in the first two episodes of “The Godfather.”
Oscar winner Al Pacino, who costarred with Robert Duvall in the “The Godfather” movies, said in a statement that working with Duvall was a privilege.
As they say, he was a born actor, and his affinity for, knowledge of, and extraordinary talent will never be forgotten. He will be missed.
After years of playing supporting parts, Duvall garnered an Oscar nomination as Colonel Kilgore, a role in which he utters what is now one of the most well-known lines in cinema history.
As low-flying US airplanes bomb a coastal tree line where he wants to go surfing, his war-loving character, bare-chested, confident, and wearing a large black cowboy hat, reflects, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
That character was initially intended to be even more outrageous—Colonel Carnage was the original name—but Duvall got it toned down, showcasing his careful acting technique.
In 2015, Duvall said to veteran talk show host Larry King, “I did my homework.” “I conducted my research.”
Francis Ford Coppola, the titan of film who directed Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather,” described his passing as “a blow.”
According to Coppola’s Instagram message, “Such a great actor and such an essential part of American Zoetrope from its beginning.”
A “vast career”: Duvall had his breakthrough performance as the enigmatic hermit Boo Radley in the 1962 movie adaptation of Harper Lee’s book “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the age of 31, making him something of a late bloomer in Hollywood.
He would go on to play a variety of parts, including a Marine officer who treats his family like soldiers in “The Great Santini” (1979), a bullying corporate executive in “Network” (1976), and finally his breakthrough performance in “Tender Mercies.”
However, Duvall frequently claimed that his favorite character was that of grizzled, wise-cracking Texas Ranger-turned-cowboy Augustus McCrae in the 1989 TV miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” which was based on the Larry McMurtry novel.
Jane Seymour, a British actress who costarred with Duvall on the 1995 movie “The Stars Fell on Henrietta,” paid a moving homage to the star on Instagram.
Seymour said in the caption of a picture of herself with Duvall, “We were able to share in his love of barbecue and even a little tango.” “The off-camera moments were equally as memorable as the actual work.”
In a little video homage to Duvall, American actor Alec Baldwin discussed the star’s “vast career.”
Baldwin remarked, “When he performed Boo Radley in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird,’ he just shattered you with his performance. He didn’t use a single word of dialogue or anything.”
Duvall has been called “the most technically proficient, the most versatile, and the most convincing actor on the screen in the United States” by film reviewer Elaine Mancini.
