Robert Duvall, who played the smooth mafia lawyer in “The Godfather” and stole the show with his depiction of a surfing-crazed colonel in “Apocalypse Now,” has died at the age of 95, his wife said Monday. His death Sunday was confirmed by his wife Luciana Duvall. “Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home,” she wrote.
Blunt-talking, prolific and glitz-averse, Duvall won an Oscar for best actor and was nominated six other times. Over his six decades-long career, he shone in both lead and supporting roles, and eventually became a director. He kept acting in his 90s. “To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything,” Luciana Duvall said. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court.”
Duvall won his Academy Award in 1983 for playing a washed-up country singer in “Tender Mercies.” But his most memorable characters also included the soft-spoken, loyal mob consigliere Tom Hagen in the first two installments of “The Godfather” and the maniacal Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now.”
“It was an honor to have worked with Robert Duvall,” Oscar winner Al Pacino, who acted alongside Duvall in “The Godfather” films, said in a statement. “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.”
As Colonel Kilgore, Duvall earned an Oscar nomination and became a bona fide star after years playing lesser roles, in a performance where he utters what is now one of cinema’s most famous lines. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” his war-loving character — bare chested, cocky and sporting a big black cowboy hat — muses as low-flying US warplanes bomb a beachfront tree line where he wants to go surfing.
That character was originally created to be even more over the top — his name was at first supposed to be Colonel Carnage — but Duvall had it toned down, demonstrating his meticulous approach to acting. “I did my homework,” Duvall told veteran talk show host Larry King in 2015. “I did my research.”
Cinema giant Francis Ford Coppola — who directed Duvall in “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather” — 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.
A vast career
Duvall was sort of a late bloomer in Hollywood — he was already 31 when he delivered his breakout performance as the mysterious recluse Boo Radley in the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He would go on to play myriad roles — a bullying corporate executive in “Network” (1976), a Marine officer who treats his family like soldiers in “The Great Santini” (1979), and then his star turn in “Tender Mercies.”
Duvall often said his favorite role, however, was one he played in a 1989 TV mini-series — the grizzled, wise-cracking Texas Ranger-turned-cowboy Augustus McCrae in “Lonesome Dove,” based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. British actress Jane Seymour, who worked with Duvall on the 1995 film “The Stars Fell on Henrietta,” took to Instagram to share a heartfelt tribute to the star.
“We were able to share in his love of barbecue and even a little tango,” Seymour captioned a photo of herself with Duvall. “Those moments off camera were just as memorable as the work itself.” US actor Alec Baldwin made a short video tribute to Duvall, speaking about the star’s “vast career.”
“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,” Baldwin said. Film critic Elaine Mancini once described Duvall as “the most technically proficient, the most versatile, and the most convincing actor on the screen in the United States.”
