Actor Robert Duvall, who starred in The Godfather, dies aged 95

KATHMANDU: Actor Robert Duvall, who appeared in The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, has died at the age of 95.

The Oscar winner for Tender Mercies died “peacefully” at his home in Middleburg, Virginia, on Sunday, according to a statement sent by his PR agency on behalf of his wife, Luciana.

“To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything,” she said. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court.”

Godfather star Al Pacino paid tribute, saying it was an “honour” to work with Duvall.

He added: “He was a born actor as they say, his connection with it, his understanding and his phenomenal gift will always be remembered.

“I will miss him.”

Duvall was known for numerous tough-guy roles over an impressive six-decade career, such as the mafia consigliere in Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.

He also played a forceful army officer in Coppola’s Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now.

He only had a few minutes of screen time but his famous line in the 1979 classic, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”, became legendary.

Coppola called his loss “a blow”.

“Such a great actor and such an essential part of American Zoetrope from its beginning,” Coppola said in a statement on Instagram, referring to his production company.

His Apocalypse Now character was originally meant to be even more over the top but Duvall toned it down and the name was changed from Captain Carnage to Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore.

“I did my homework,” Duvall told veteran talk show host Larry King in 2015. “I did my research.”

Tributes began to pour in for Duvall after news broke of his death.

American comedian and actor Adam Sandler posted photographs of the two from their time together shooting the 2022 film Hustle.

“Funny as hell. Strong as hell. One of the greatest actors we ever had. Such a great man to talk to and laugh with … sending his wife Luciana and all his family and friends our condolences.”

Oscar winner Jamie Lee-Curtis also posted a tribute on Instagram with a picture of Duvall as Tom Hagen in The Godfather.

“The greatest consigliere the screen has ever seen. Bravo, Robert Duvall.”

Co-star, Robert Patrick, who played the son of Duvall’s character in the 2013 film Jayne Mansfield’s Car said he was “gutted”.

“Over the years I would call Bobby and we’d talk movies and barbecue. He loved barbecue and I’d always let him know when I was having it in Lockhart, Texas.”

“I will miss Bobby. I will always be proud that I got to play his son. Rest in peace my friend.”

The statement from Duvall’s wife continued: “For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented. In doing so, he leaves something lasting and unforgettable to us all.

“Thank you for the years of support you showed Bob and for giving us this time and privacy to celebrate the memories he leaves behind.”

Nominated for seven Oscars, Duvall won best actor in 1983 for playing a washed-up country singer in Tender Mercies.

His other roles included a bullying corporate executive in 1976’s Network, and a Marine officer in 1979’s The Great Santini, as well as parts in 1990’s The Handmaid’s Tale and 2014’s The Judge alongside Robert Downey Jr.

Duvall often said his favourite role was as the Texas Ranger-turned-cowboy Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove in the 1989 TV mini-series, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry.

He made his screen debut in the 1963 film adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, playing the reclusive Boo Radley.

“When he did To Kill A Mockingbird he just destroyed you with his performance of Boo Radley, he used not a single word of dialogue, not a single word, and he just shatters you,” US actor Alec Baldwin said in a short video tribute to Duvall.

The screenplay was written by Horton Foote, who also wrote several other films Duvall starred in, including Tender Mercies, Tomorrow and The Chase.

In 1997’s The Apostle, which he wrote and directed, Duvall played an evangelical preacher who begins a new life in Louisiana after committing a crime.

British actress Jane Seymour, who worked with Duvall on the 1995 film The Stars Fell on Henrietta, shared a heartfelt tribute on Instagram.

“We were able to share in his love of barbecue and even a little tango,” Seymour wrote alongside a photo of herself with Duvall. “Those moments off camera were just as memorable as the work itself.”

How Robert Duvall became a Hollywood great

Robert Duvall was a distinguished and prolific screen actor who lent a brooding intensity and grizzled authority to seven decades of American film-making.

Nominated for Academy Awards on seven occasions, he won best actor for his role as a troubled country singer in 1983’s Tender Mercies.

His many other roles included a mafia consigliere in The Godfather, a bombastic army officer in Apocalypse Now, and a Texas Ranger-turned-cattle driver in Lonesome Dove.

More character actor than leading man, he could be relied upon to inject a feisty, fiery machismo and a cantankerous contrariness into the most mainstream Hollywood offering.

Born Robert Selden Duvall in January 1931 in San Diego, California, Duvall was a self-proclaimed “navy brat” due to his father’s life-long career in the United States Navy.

His father expected him to follow him into the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Yet his son instead served two years in the army following his 1953 college graduation.

Duvall subsequently moved to New York to study acting, working as a postal clerk to make ends meet. His classmates included Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman, who both became lifelong friends.

“A friend is someone who many years ago offered you his last $300 when you broke your pelvis,” he would later recall. “A friend is Gene Hackman.”

Duvall began acting professionally at the Gateway Playhouse, a summer theatre in Long Island, where he starred in plays by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and others.

His performance in Horton Foote’s one-act play The Midnight Caller led the playwright to recommend him for the role of Boo Radley in the 1962 film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.

By that time, Duvall had already appeared on television in such shows as Naked City, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Armstrong Circle Theatre.

To Kill a Mockingbird, which Foote adapted from Harper Lee’s novel, was the actor’s first film role and led to appearances in such films as The Chase, Bullitt and True Grit.

The Rain People, released in 1969, marked his first collaboration with director Francis Ford Coppola, with whom he would go on to work in the first two Godfather films.

Other significant roles around this time included the highly strung Major Burns in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H and THX 1138, the eponymous protagonist of George Lucas’s dystopian 1971 sci-fi debut.

Duvall’s performance as The Godfather’s Tom Hagen, the shrewd chief advisor to Marlon Brando’s ageing Don Vito Corleone, earned him his first Academy Award nomination in 1973.

He reprised the role in 1974’s The Godfather Part II, by which time he had collaborated with Foote again in the 1972 film of his play Tomorrow. Network, from 1976, cast him as a venal television producer.

Meanwhile, there were appearances with Michael Caine in The Eagle Has Landed, Laurence Olivier in The Betsy, and Muhammad Ali in the boxer’s biopic The Greatest.

In 1979, Duvall gave perhaps his most memorable performance as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Coppola’s Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now.

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” his character famously declared after leading a deadly helicopter attack on a Vietnamese village.

The actor was shown to no less domineering effect in The Great Santini, playing a frustrated Marine pilot who hectors and browbeats his teenage children.

The scene in which he torments his son by bouncing a basketball against his head was spoofed by Mike Myers’ Dr Evil in the second Austin Powers film.

Duvall’s work in Apocalypse Now and The Great Santini saw him nominated for Oscars in consecutive years. The former also earned him a Bafta and the first of four Golden Globe awards.

Yet it was his role as alcoholic singer Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies that finally saw him land an Oscar, beating an all-British line-up of fellow nominees that included Caine and Albert Finney.

Duvall’s other Oscar nominations came for his performances in 1997’s The Apostle, 1998 legal drama A Civil Action and 2014’s The Judge.

In The Apostle, which he also wrote and directed, the actor played an evangelical preacher who begins a new life in Louisiana after committing a crime.

In real life, Duvall attended church regularly during his childhood but was reluctant to discuss his faith, merely disclosing he had “always been a believer”.

The staunch Republican was less reticent about his political persuasions and was a guest at President George W Bush’s inauguration in 2001.

Duvall’s other many screen roles included an LA police office in Colors, an astronaut in Deep Impact, and a Nascar crew chief in Days of Thunder alongside Tom Cruise.

He was reunited with Cruise in 2012’s Jack Reacher, in which Duvall played a former soldier turned gun shop owner.

Yet Duvall often looked happiest when riding a horse, be it in the acclaimed TV mini-series Lonesome Dove or in the Kevin Costner Western Open Range.

“I think the Western kind of defines us,” the actor said in 2016. “The English have Shakespeare; the French, Moliere; the Russians have Chekhov. But the Western is ours.”

His other passions included football, the tango and the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, a city he professed to love “more than any place else”.

“A young actor once asked me ‘What do you do between jobs?'” he once recalled. “I said, ‘Hobbies, hobbies and more hobbies’. It keeps you off dope.”

Duvall was married and divorced three times and is survived by his fourth wife, the Argentine actress Luciana Pedraza. He did not father any children, commenting in 2003 that it had “never worked out”.

-BBC