Robert Duvall, Academy Award Winning Actor, Has Passed Way At 95
Image Source: Moviefone
Hollywood legend, Robert Duvall passed away at his farm in Virginia on February 15th, 2026. Stars of stage and screen have come together to mourn. Godfather director Francis Ford Virginia described him as “an essential part of American Zoetrope from its beginning” and former co-star Adam Sandler said that Duvall was "funny as hell. Strong as hell. One of the greatest actors we ever had. Such a great man to talk to and laugh with."
Born in 1931 in San Diego, the son of a decorated Naval Officer, he was expected to follow his father’s footsteps into the military. However, by the winter of 1955 he had joined the off-Broadway theatre group (Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre), run by Sanford Meisner, father of ‘the Meisner method’, (a style of method acting). During his time there, he became close friends with Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman.
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He spent the next five years on the New York play circuit, in classics like The Rainmaker, and A Streetcar Named Desire. He didn’t make it onto the screen until 1960 when The Robert Herridge Theater offered him a single episode. He bounced from one anthology serial to the next, until he landed his first Hollywood role, Boo Radley in the infamous To Kill A Mockingbird (1962). Strangely, despite the film’s success, Duvall didn’t breakout in Hollywood and continued to stay as a guest actor on established TV shows. But he remained a popular hire by top names in theater throughout the sixties, starring in Arthur Miller’s View from a Bridge and David Mamet’s American Buffalo.
Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter
But in 1969 Hollywood called again, this time in the form of western, True Grit. One of the most popular movies of the year, this time Duvall wasn’t ignored. He was then hired for M*A*S*H movie, and then for George Lucas’ first outing, THX 1138. Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, The Godfather came a year later and won Duvall his first Oscar nomination. After that, a floodgate of prime roles and awards opened.
Ironically, despite walking away from a career in the military, he often ended up in uniform in movies like The Eagle Has Landed, Apocalypse Now. As he aged, his career only flourished, and by the turn of the Millenium he became synonymous with the Hollywood buster in movies like Armageddon and Gone In Sixty Seconds. His last picture was The Pale Blue Eye in 2022 bringing to close a career that had spanned six decades.
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Source(s): BBC CNN Far Out Magazine Wiki IMDb
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