The China Mail - Robert Duvall: understated actor's actor, dead at 95

Duvall's 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 became a director over a career spanning six decades. He kept acting in his 90s.

His most memorable characters included the soft-spoken, loyal mob lawyer Tom Hagen in the first two installments of "The Godfather" and the maniacal, surfing-mad Lieutenant General William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic "Apocalypse Now."

The latter earned Duvall an Oscar nomination and made him a bona fide star after years playing lesser roles. In it 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 strafe a beachfront tree line with the incendiary gel.

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.

"I did my homework," Duvall told veteran talk show host Larry King in 2015. "I did my research."

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'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 a washed-up country singer in "Tender Mercies" (1983), for which he won the Oscar for best actor. Duvall was nominated for an Oscar six other times as well.

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.

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."

In her statement Luciana Duvall said, "to 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."

- 'A lot of crap' -

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.

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.

"Hoffman, me, my brother, three or four other actors and singers had a place on 107th and Broadway in Manhattan, uptown," Duvall told GQ in 2014.

Duvall said he had few regrets in his career.

But one was turning down the lead part in "Jaws" (which went to Roy Scheider) because he instead wanted to play the salty fisherman, a role that went to Robert Shaw.

Director Steven Spielberg told Duvall he was too young for that part.

Duvall also admitted he took some jobs just for the money.

"I did a lot of crap," he told The Wall Street Journal in 2017. "Television stuff. But I had to make a living."

Duvall made his home far from the glitz and chatter of Hollywood -- in rural Virginia, where his family had roots.

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.

He said he went to New York and Los Angeles only when necessary.

"I like a good Hollywood party," he told the Journal. "I have a lot of friends there. But I like living here."

And of all his storied roles, Duvall says his favorite was indeed that of the soft-hearted cowboy McCrae in "Lonesome Dove."

"That’s my 'Hamlet,'" he told The New York Times in 2014.

"The English have Shakespeare; the French, Moliere. In Argentina, they have Borges, but the Western is ours. I like that."

D.Wang--ThChM