Oscar winner Robert Duvall, a versatile actor who made lasting impressions in a range of roles, from leads to supporting roles, such as the napalm-loving colonel in “Apocalypse Now” or the spectral Boo Radley in “Sunshine,” has died at the age of 95, his wife said in a Facebook post.
“In each of his many roles, Bob devoted himself completely to the characters and the truth of the human spirit they represented,” Luciana Duvall said in the post.
Duvall has played strong leaders such as Lt. Col. Bull Meechum in “The Great Santini” and the title character in “Stalin,” as well as haggard and decaying characters in “The End of the World,” for which he won an Oscar, and “The Apostle.” He has won awards for both types of roles.
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Duvall, the son of a Navy admiral and an amateur actress, grew up in Annapolis, Maryland. After graduating from Principia College in Illinois and serving in the United States Army, he moved to New York, where he roomed with Dustin Hoffman and befriended Gene Hackman when the three were struggling theater students.
After working on several television shows, Duvall made a strong impression even in small roles, such as his first film role, the mysterious recluse Boo Radley in The Sun.
Duvall got the role at the suggestion of the film’s screenwriter, Horton Foote, who liked her work in one of his plays.
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Foote later wrote “The End of the World,” a 1983 film for which Duvall won the best actor Oscar as a washed-up country singer.
Perhaps Duvall’s most memorable role was in Frances Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now,” playing the eccentric, surf-obsessed Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore.
Duvall only had a few minutes of screen time, but nearly stole the show when his character gloated on a battlefield after a successful attack and exuberantly proclaimed, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” It smelled “like victory,” Kilgore said.
The role earned Duvall one of his seven Oscar nominations. Another was Best Supporting Actor for Coppola’s “The Godfather”, playing Tom Hagen, advisor to the Corleone mafia family. Duvall appeared in the second “Godfather” film, but turned down the third because he considered the salary offer inadequate.
Duvall was also nominated for an Oscar for “The Great Santini”, “The Apostle”, “Civil Action” and “The Judge” in 2014. In total, he appeared in almost 100 films.
Duvall had a knack for playing cowboys. He won an Emmy for the television miniseries “Lost Trail,” starred opposite John Wayne in “True Grit” and received an Emmy nomination for the miniseries “Guns of the West.” He often said that his portrayal of friendly cop-turned-cowboy Gus McRae in The Gunmen was his favorite role.
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“I think I nailed a very specific character who represents something important in the history of the Western movement,” Duvall told the New York Times. “After that, I felt like I could retire, that I had done something.”
When he tired of Hollywood, Duvall started making his own films. He wrote, directed and was nominated for an Oscar for best actor for “The Apostle,” the story of a conflicted preacher.
Duvall did the same with “Assassination Tango,” a film that allowed him to show his passion for tango and Argentina, where he met his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza. Both were born on January 5th, but 41 years apart.
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Duvall divided his time between Los Angeles, Argentina and a 146-acre farm in Virginia, where he transformed the barn into a tango dance hall.
