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“Duvall never plays the same character twice, and he makes other actors look good. He brings a quality to his listening, his reactions, that charges a scene even when he’s not talking.” – Roger Ebert on Robert Duvall
Another titan is gone. They seem to be falling with more frequency these days. Following in the footsteps of Gene Hackman, Diane Keaton, Robert Redford, and the many more we lost in 2025, today the news broke that one of the strongest pillars of one of the most important eras of film history is gone. Robert Duvall passed away yesterday “surrounded by love and comfort” at his Virginia ranch, according to his wife Luciana.
It’s hard to overstate the legacy of Robert Duvall. Just the breadth of his output alone makes him an essential name in any retelling of film history as he worked for seven consecutive decades starting in the 1960s. Over that span, he won an Oscar, four Golden Globe Awards, two Emmys, a SAG Award, a BAFTA Award, and more. He was nearly as essential to the stage as he was to film and TV, appearing in vital productions of Wait Until Dark and David Mamet’s powerful American Buffalo.
From the minute he appeared on screen in Boo Radley in the beloved adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, there was a presence to Robert Duvall that was undeniable. He won his Oscar for “Tender Mercies,” but he just as easily could have taken home Academy Awards for a dozen other films: “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” “The Great Santini,” “The Apostle,” “The Conversation,” “Network,” “The Natural,” “Sling Blade,” “Crazy Heart,” “The Natural,” “A Civil Action,” and “Rambling Rose.” Watching those 12 films alone would give one a solid marathon of American filmmaking from the ’70 to the ‘90s. Duvall was a support beam for the American film movement.
Born to a man who was a Rear Admiral and a woman who was reportedly a relative of General Robert E. Lee, Robert Selden Duvall always seemed to have a bit of military authority in his on-screen presence. Everything changed for young Duvall when he enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre under the legendary Sanford Meisner, where Duvall’s classmates included James Caan, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman.
Like a lot of actors of his era, Robert Duvall began his career on the stage, reportedly taking a role in a Long Island summer theater production in 1952. He worked consistently on the stage in the New York area in the ‘50s, and his most notable role off-Broadway in this period was in the original production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge with Dustin Hoffman. He made his Broadway debut in Wait Until Dark in 1966 and played Teach in the first Broadway production of American Buffalo. It’s an incredible part that would be played in later productions by Al Pacino and William H. Macy.
Robert Duvall transitioned to television in the ‘60s, appearing in numerous hits of the day like “The Untouchables,” “The Outer Limits,” “The Fugitive,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” and a great episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “Miniature” in which he plays a museum goer who discovers that a dollhouse has living residents. When he falls in love with the female of the dollhouse, things get even weirder. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it’s easy to see the way that Duvall holds a camera even this early in his career in 1963.
The story goes that none other than Horton Foote saw a young Duvall in a production if his The Midnight Caller in 1957 and he’s the one who recommended him for Boo Radley in 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (and would later write the part that would win Duvall his Oscar). The recluse in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, Radley is a character who reflects acceptance of outsiders in Lee’s book and the adaptation, a figure who represents the folly of judgment. Radley ends up saving the lives of Jem and Scout Finch, and Duvall makes an impact in the film with limited screen time.
There were small roles in big films in the ‘60s, including parts in “Bullitt” and “True Grit,” but Duvall’s prime came relatively late, in his forties, in the 1970s. There were few major American filmmakers of the era whose work wasn’t grounded by Duvall, including Robert Altman (“M*A*S*H”), George Lucas (“THX 1138”), John Sturges (“The Eagle Has Landed”), Sidney Lumet (“Network”), and, of course, Francis Ford Coppola, who cast Duvall as Tom Hagen in a little movie called “The Godfather,” which earned Duvall his first Oscar nomination. He would, of course, appear in the sequel, along with Coppola’s other ‘70s masterpieces “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now,” which won him BAFTA and Golden Globe awards.
Going into the ‘80s as one of the most acclaimed character actors in the world, Duvall would eventually get his Oscar for Bruce Beresford’s “Tender Mercies,” the story of an alcoholic country singer. Roger Ebert wrote in his Great Movies essay on the film, “It contains one of his most understated performances. It’s mostly done with his eyes. The actor who shouted, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” here plays a character who wants to be rid of shouting. The film itself never shouts. Its title evokes its mood, although this is not a story about happiness. “I don’t trust happiness. I never did, I never will,” Mac Sledge tells Rosa Lee, in a scene framed entirely in a medium-long shot that possibly won him the Oscar.”
The roles would literally never stop from here. In 1989, he appeared in what many still consider the best TV mini-series of all time, “Lonesome Dove,” which he told the Los Angeles Times was his favorite role. He won a Golden Globe for the part.
Robert Duvall really maintained remarkable control over his career for the last four decades of his life, a model of how to use fame to be selective with roles. He refused to return to “The Godfather Part III” because he wasn’t getting paid as much as Pacino. He wrote and directed himself to an Oscar nomination for his breathtaking work in “The Apostle.” Other highlights include “Days of Thunder,” “Rambling Rose,” “Falling Down,” “The Paper,” “Sling Blade,” “Deep Impact,” “A Civil Action,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “We Own the Night,” “Get Low,” “Jack Reacher,” “The Judge,” and “Widows.”
Robert Duvall wasn’t a typical Hollywood presence. When you think of him, it’s not on red carpets or late-night talk shows. It’s on screen. It’s the characters who you can see thinking, feeling, and reacting, often men who believe themselves impenetrable from the world being proven otherwise.
As Roger said, “It’s mostly done with his eyes.”
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/YJPFrHk
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