Robert Duvall, who played the role of a smooth mafia lawyer in “The Godfather” and a colonel in “Apocalypse Now” died at the age of 95 on Sunday.
The iconic actor’s death was announced on Monday by his wife Luciana Duvall.
“Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home,” she wrote.
Blunt-talking, prolific and glitz-averse, Duvall won an Oscar for best actor and was nominated six other times. Over his six decades-long career, he shone in both lead and supporting roles, and eventually became a director.
“To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything,” Luciana Duvall said. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court.”
Duvall won his Academy Award in 1983 for playing a washed-up country singer in “Tender Mercies.”
His most memorable characters also included the soft-spoken, loyal mob consigliere Tom Hagen in the first two installments of “The Godfather” and the maniacal Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now.”
The latter, which earned Duvall an Oscar nomination and made him a bona fide star after years playing lesser roles, sees him utter 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 bomb a beachfront tree line where he wants to go surfing.
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, demonstrating his meticulous approach to acting.
“I did my homework,” Duvall told veteran talk show host Larry King in 2015. “I did my research.”
Duvall was a relatively late bloomer in Hollywood — he was already 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 then his star turn in “Tender Mercies.”
Duvall often said his favourite role 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.