Robert Duvall, a prolific, Oscar-winning actor who shunned glitz and won praise as one of his generation\u2019s greatest and most versatile artists, has died at age 95.<\/p>\n
Duvall\u2019s death on Sunday was confirmed by his wife, Luciana Duvall in a statement posted Monday on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Duvall shone in both lead and supporting roles, and eventually became a director over a career spanning six decades. He kept acting in his 90s.<\/p>\n
His most memorable characters included the soft-spoken, loyal mob lawyer Tom Hagen in the first two instalments of \u201cThe Godfather\u201d and the maniacal, surfing-mad Lieutenant General William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s 1979 Vietnam War epic \u201cApocalypse Now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latter earned Duvall an Oscar nomination and made him a bona fide star after years of playing lesser roles. In it, he utters what is now one of cinema\u2019s most famous lines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the smell of napalm in the morning,\u201d his war-loving character, bare-chested, cocky and sporting a big black cowboy hat, muses as low-flying US warplanes strafe a beachfront tree line with the incendiary gel.<\/p>\n
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 in a show of his nose-to-the-grindstone approach to acting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did my homework,\u201d Duvall told veteran talk show host Larry King in 2015. \u201cI did my research.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duvall was a late bloomer in the profession. He was 31 when he delivered his breakout performance as the mysterious recluse Boo Radley in the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee\u2019s novel \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would go on to play myriad roles, a bullying corporate executive in \u201cNetwork\u201d (1976), a Marine officer who treats his family like soldiers in \u201cThe Great Santini\u201d (1979), and a washed-up country singer in \u201cTender Mercies\u201d (1983), for which he won the Oscar for best actor. Duvall was nominated for an Oscar six other times as well.<\/p>\n
Duvall often said his favorite role, however, was one he played in a 1989 TV mini-series \u2014 the grizzled, wise-cracking Texas Ranger-turned-cowboy Augustus McCrae in \u201cLonesome Dove,\u201d based on the novel by Larry McMurtry.<\/p>\n
Film critic Elaine Mancini once described Duvall as \u201cthe most technically proficient, the most versatile, and the most convincing actor on the screen in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her statement Luciana Duvall said, \u201cto the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything. His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Humble beginnings<\/strong><\/p>\n Born in 1931, the son of a Navy officer father and an amateur actress mother, Duvall studied drama before spending two years in the US Army.<\/p>\n He then settled in New York, where he shared an apartment with Dustin Hoffman. The pair were friends with Gene Hackman as all three worked their way up in showbiz. These were lean times for the future stars.<\/p>\n \u201cHoffman, me, my brother, three or four other actors and singers had a place on 107th and Broadway in Manhattan, uptown,\u201d Duvall told GQ in 2014.<\/p>\n Duvall said he had few regrets in his career.<\/p>\n But one was turning down the lead part in \u201cJaws\u201d (which went to Roy Scheider) because he instead wanted to play the salty fisherman, a role that went to Robert Shaw.<\/p>\n Director Steven Spielberg told Duvall he was too young for that part.<\/p>\n Duvall also admitted he took some jobs just for the money.<\/p>\n \u201cI did a lot of crap,\u201d he told The Wall Street Journal in 2017. \u201cTelevision stuff. But I had to make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n Duvall made his home far from the glitz and chatter of Hollywood, in rural Virginia, where his family had roots.<\/p>\n He and his fourth wife, Argentine-born Luciana Pedraza, 40 years his junior, lived in a nearly 300-year-old farmhouse. Duvall never had children.<\/p>\n He said he went to New York and Los Angeles only when necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cI like a good Hollywood party,\u201d he told the Journal. \u201cI have a lot of friends there. But I like living here.\u201d<\/p>\n And of all his storied roles, Duvall says his favourite was indeed that of the soft-hearted cowboy McCrae in \u201cLonesome Dove.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s my \u2018Hamlet,’\u201d he told The New York Times in 2014.<\/p>\n \u201cThe English have Shakespeare; the French, Moliere. In Argentina, they have Borges, but the Western is ours. I like that.\u201d<\/p>\n The post \u2018Apocalypse Now\u2019 actor Robert Duvall dead at 95<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Robert Duvall, a prolific, Oscar-winning actor who shunned glitz and won praise as one of his generation\u2019s greatest and most versatile artists, has died at age 95. Duvall\u2019s death on Sunday was confirmed by his wife, Luciana Duvall in a statement posted Monday on Facebook. Duvall shone in both lead and supporting roles, and eventually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}