Robert Duvall, the Oscar-winning actor of matchless versatility and dedication whose classic roles included the intrepid consigliere of the first two Godfather movies and the over-the-hill country music singer in Tender Mercies, has died at 95.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Duvall died "peacefully" at his home Sunday in, Virginia, according to a statement posted on his Facebook page by his wife, Luciana Duvall.
"To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything," she wrote.
"His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court. For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented."
The bald, wiry Duvall didn't have leading man looks, but few "character actors" enjoyed such a long and rewarding career, in leading and supporting roles, from an itinerant preacher to Josef Stalin.
Beginning with his 1962 film debut as Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbour in To Kill a Mockingbird, Duvall created a gallery of unforgettable portrayals.
They earned him seven Academy Award nominations and the best actor prize for Tender Mercies in 1983.
He also won four Golden Globes, including one for playing the philosophical cattle-drive boss in the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove, his favourite role.
He had been acting for some 20 years when The Godfather established him as one of the most in-demand performers of Hollywood in 1972.
Director Francis Ford Coppola chose him to play Tom Hagen in the mafia epic that featured Al Pacino and Marlon Brando.
Duvall was a master of subtlety as an Irishman among Italians, rarely at the centre of a scene, but often listening and advising in the background, an irreplaceable thread through the saga of the Corleone crime family.
"Stars and Italians alike depend on his efficiency, his tidying up around their grand gestures, his being the perfect shortstop on a team of personality sluggers," wrote the critic David Thomson.
"Was there ever a role better designed for its actor than that of Tom Hagen in both parts of The Godfather?'
In Apocalypse Now, Duvall was the embodiment of deranged masculinity as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who with equal vigour enjoyed surfing and bombing raids on the Viet Cong.
Duvall required few takes for one of the most famous passages in movie history, barked out on the battlefield by a bare-chested, cavalry-hatted Kilgore: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body.
"The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like - victory."
Coppola once commented about Duvall: "Actors click into character at different times - the first week, third week. Bobby's hot after one or two takes".
He was Oscar-nominated as supporting actor for The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, but a dispute over money led him to turn down the third Godfather epic, a loss deeply felt by critics, fans and Godfather colleagues. Duvall would complain publicly about being offered less than his co-stars.
Fellow actors marvelled at Duvall's studious research and planning, and his coiled energy.
Michael Caine, who co-starred with him in the 2003 Secondhand Lions, once told The Associated Press: "Before a big scene, Bobby just sits there, absolutely quiet; you know when not to talk to him".
Anyone who disturbed him would suffer the well-known Duvall temper, famously on display during the filming of the John Wayne Western True Grit, when Duvall seethed at director Henry Hathaway's advice to "tense up" before a scene.
Duvall was awarded an Oscar in 1984 for his leading role as the troubled singer and songwriter Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies, a prize he accepted while clad in a cowboy tuxedo with Western tie.
In 1998, he was nominated for best actor in The Apostle, a drama about a wayward Southern evangelist which he wrote, directed, starred in, produced and largely financed.
Among other notable roles: the outlaw gang leader who gets ambushed by John Wayne in True Grit; Jesse James in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid; the pious and beleaguered Frank Burns in M-A-S-H; the TV hatchet man in Network; Dr Watson in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution; and the sadistic father in The Great Santini.
In his mid-80s, he received a supporting Oscar nomination as the title character of the 2014 release The Judge, in which he is accused of causing a death in a hit-and-run accident.
Robert Selden Duvall grew up in the Navy towns of Annapolis and the San Diego area, where he was born in 1931. He spent time in other cities as his father, who rose to be an admiral, was assigned to various duties.
The boy's experience helped in his adult profession as he learned the nuances of regional speech and observed the psyche of military men, which he would portray in several films.
He lacked the concentration for schoolwork and nearly flunked out of Principia College in Elsah, Illinois.
His despairing parents decided he needed something to keep him in college so he wouldn't be drafted for the Korean War.
"They recommended acting as an expedient thing to get through," he recalled. "I'm glad they did."
After two years in the Army, he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, hanging out with such other young hopefuls as Robert Morse, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman.
After a one-night performance in A View From the Bridge, Duvall began getting offers for work in TV series, among them The Naked City and The Defenders.
Duvall had been a tango dancer since seeing the musical Tango Argentina in the 1980s and visited in Argentina dozens of times to study the dance and the culture. The result was the 2003 release about a hit man with a passion for tango.
His co-star was Luciana Pedraza, 42 years his junior, whom he married in 2005.