Oscar winner Robert Duvall, a versatile actor who left lasting impressions in a variety of roles, from leads to supporting parts, such as the napalm-obsessed colonel in “Apocalypse Now” or the spectral Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, died at 95, his wife said in a Facebook post.
“For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything of himself to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented,” Luciana Duvall said in the post.
Duvall portrayed strong leaders like Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meechum in “The Great Santini” and the title character in “Stalin”, as well as decadent and defeated characters in “Tender Mercies” and “The Apostle”. He won awards for both types of roles.
Duvall, 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 U.S. Army, he moved to New York, where he shared an apartment with Dustin Hoffman and became friends with Gene Hackman when the three were struggling acting students.
After working on several television shows, Duvall made a strong impression even in small roles, like his film debut as the mysterious recluse Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Duvall landed the role on the suggestion of the film’s screenwriter, Horton Foote, who had liked Duvall’s work in one of his plays.
Foote later wrote “Tender Mercies”, a 1983 film for which Duvall won the Best Actor Oscar portraying a decadent country singer.
Perhaps Duvall’s most memorable role was in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now”, playing the eccentric Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, obsessed with surfing.
Duvall had only a few minutes of screen time but nearly stole the film when his character patrols the battlefield after a successful attack and proclaims enthusiastically: “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 for Best Supporting Actor in “The Godfather”, playing Tom Hagen, counselor to the Corleone mafia family. Duvall appeared in the second film of the franchise but declined the third, deeming the offered salary inadequate.
Duvall was also Oscar-nominated for “The Great Santini”, “The Apostle”, “A Civil Action” (“A Qualquer Preço”) and “The Judge” in 2014. In all, he appeared in nearly 100 films.
Duvall also had a talent for portraying cowboys. He won an Emmy for the TV miniseries “Broken Trail” and starred alongside John Wayne in “True Grit”. The actor earned an Emmy nomination for the miniseries “Lonesome Dove” and often said his portrayal of the sympathetic sheriff-turned-cowboy Gus McRae was his favorite role.
“I think I managed to build a very specific character that represents something important in the history of the Old West movement,” Duvall told the New York Times. “After that, I felt I could retire, that I had done something important.”
When he tired of Hollywood, Duvall made his own films. He wrote, directed and earned an acting Oscar nomination for “The Apostle”, the story of a conflicted preacher.
Duvall did the same with “Assassination Tango”, a film that let him showcase his passion for tango and Argentina, where he met his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza. Both were born on January 5, but 41 years apart.
Duvall split his time between Los Angeles, Argentina and a 146-hectare farm in Virginia, where he converted a barn into a tango dance hall.
Fonte: brasil247.com