If there is one word that characterizes what Robert Duvall stood for as an actor, it’s “authenticity.” He spent more than seven decades as an actor in movies and television and on the stage, and I’d be hard pressed to recall a single performance where he did not fully inhabit the person he was playing.
And he played an extraordinary range of characters, not all of them as famous as his roles in “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “Tender Mercies,” the latter perhaps his most lauded and best-known work. Duvall, who died Feb. 15, was an actor’s actor, meaning he always put the part first and shunned histrionics. He didn’t want us to see him acting, which, of course, is the most difficult kind of acting of all.
I first became aware of Duvall in 1962 in his brief cameo as the strangely sympathetic, hermit-like Boo Radley in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” though he had been appearing for years on stage and on television. Has there ever been a more memorable five-minute appearance in a movie? The held-in force, the air of quiet supplication, was altogether remarkable.
Why We Wrote This
In more than 80 films over his long career, Robert Duvall stood out for his his authenticity, our film critic writes. By respecting the characters he played, Duvall respected his audience – never playing down to us.
Duvall was not a traditional Hollywood leading man, and so much – though certainly not all – of his best work was in supporting parts. As Tom Hagen, the German Irish American consigliere in the first two “Godfather” films, he epitomized the staunch bearing of a man for whom service to the king is all. His rectitude, seemingly so matter-of-fact, is chilling.
As Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now,” who orders his men to wipe out a village held by the Viet Cong so his men can go surfing, he utters the egregiously immortal line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” He says the words with such relish that you can practically inhale the toxicity.
His Academy Award-winning performance in “Tender Mercies” as Mac Sledge, an alcoholic former country-western star, is perhaps his most quintessential. Duvall was big on researching his roles right down to the accuracy of regional accents. But his performance here transcends mere documentary-style realism. He summons up a complete character utilizing the sparest of means. Everything about Sledge is right there in his gait, the slope of his weary shoulders, the faint twang of heartbreak in his songs (which of course Duvall performed, and wrote some of, himself).
There is much else to remember Duvall by. His favorite performance, and one of his best, is as the womanizing, philosophical, retired Texas Ranger trail boss in the TV miniseries “Lonesome Dove.” It is one of many Western roles Duvall took on in his long career. Another of my favorites is his turn as the grizzled cattleman in “Open Range,” opposite Kevin Costner. His performance is so lived-in that he even seems to be chewing his food in character. Duvall once summed up his affinity for Westerns this way: “The English have Shakespeare, the French Molière, and the Russians Chekhov. The Western is ours.”
But it didn’t really matter what era Duvall’s characters inhabited. He was not only at home on the range. He was a marvelous Dr. Watson teaming with Nicol Williamson’s Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.” His TV executive in “Network” is the archetype of corporate steeliness. He was brutally effective as the Marine fighter pilot in “The Great Santini” who cruelly challenges his son after a basketball game by bouncing a ball off the boy’s head.
One of Duvall’s very best films was “The Apostle,” which he wrote, directed, and starred in (and largely self-financed). He’s a Pentecostal preacher on the run who inherits a small rural church in Louisiana given him by a retired Black minister. It’s typical of Duvall that he cast the film using many real-life congregants and townspeople. It’s one of the best redemption sagas ever made.
Duvall’s secret as an actor was an open one: He respected the characters he played, their truth, and by doing so, he respected his audience by never playing down to us. “It’s just talking and listening,” he once said about acting. “Nothing’s precious. Just let it sit there and find its own way.”