One of America’s finest actors, the legendary Robert Duvall, has passed away at age 95. He died peacefully surrounded by family, according to the AP. In his long career, Duvall received seven Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Actor in 1983 for Tender Mercies. He also won four Golden Globes over the course of his career in Hollywood. Although his acting credits are a mile long, film fans will forever remember him most for his roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s first two Godfather films, as well as Apocalypse Now. His last Oscar nomination came in 2015, for the film The Judge.
Robert Duvall was born in 1931 in San Diego, California, the son of a U.S. Navy Admiral. Although he had a brief stint in the army, he stated he was never good at anything but performing, and pursued a life on stage. One of the earliest friends he made in acting classes was Gene Hackman, who would go on to star with him in The Conversation. After several TV acting gigs, including The Twilight Zone, Duvall landed his breakthrough performance as Boo Radley in the classic To Kill a Mockingbird. He would then go on to play parts in hit films like True Grit, Bullitt, and M*A*S*H. He was also the star of George Lucas’ first feature film, THX 1138.
Duvall’s genuine breakthrough into the upper echelon of Hollywood came in Francis Ford Coppola’s crime epic The Godfather in 1972. In the film, he played Tom Hagen, an Irish-born orphan adopted into the Corleone family. He became a lawyer, becoming Don Vito Corleone’s consigliere, a calm and rational voice in a tempestuous family. The Godfather made stars out of almost the entire younger cast, including Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, and James Caan. Duvall would reprise the role of Hagen in The Godfather Part II. Soon after, he would play another iconic character for Coppola in 1979’s Apocalypse Now. In the film, he delivered one of cinema’s most iconic lines as Lt. Colonel Kilgore, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
With his star now ascended, Duvall acted in a staggering 78 movies over the succeeding fifty years. He also wrote and directed the 1998 film The Apostle. This film garnered many accolades for him, including several Academy Award nominations. Among some of his bigger films are The Natural, Falling Down, Sling Blade, Secondhand Lions, and Widows. He also did television work, including Lonesome Dove, and won an Emmy in 2006 for the AMC series Broken Trail. His final acting role came in 2022, in the film The Pale Blue Eye, at the age of 91. Duvall is survived by his wife of twenty years, Luciana Pedraza, with whom he co-founded a charity called The Robert Duvall Children’s Fund. Robert Duvall left an indelible mark on cinema, and his work will be enjoyed by new audiences for decades to come.