Robert Duvall, the actor who spent seven decades convincing audiences that a man could be both granite-faced and profoundly human, has died at the age of ninety-five. He passed away peacefully at his farm in Virginia, reportedly after a final, perfectly delivered line to his doctor: “I’m not done yet.” The doctor, perhaps wisely, disagreed. Duvall never looked like a movie star, which was the point. While Hollywood busied itself manufacturing pretty boys with the emotional range of a parking meter, Duvall arrived looking as though he had been carved from the side of a mountain and then taught to speak in complete sentences.
He could play a Mafia consigliere with the calm of a man ordering coffee (The Godfather), a surf-obsessed colonel who loved the smell of napalm in the morning (Apocalypse Now), or a broken-down country singer who finds redemption in a motel room (Tender Mercies), for which he finally collected the Oscar that had been hiding from him since 1972. Each time, he did it without once raising his voice above a murmur or resorting to the histrionics that lesser actors mistake for depth. Critics called him 'authentic.' Duvall, who served in the US Army and studied at the Neighbourhood Playhouse with people who took Stanislavski seriously, probably filed the compliment under 'obvious.'
He did not do glamour; glamour would have been embarrassed in his presence. He did truth, or at least the version of it that could survive on a film set without being laughed off the screen. Off-screen, he married four times, the last union—to the luminous Argentine actress Luciana Pedraza—lasted longer than most Hollywood studios. They tangoed together in Buenos Aires, which must have been a sight: the sternest face in American cinema gliding across a floor as if he had been born wearing patent leather shoes instead of cowboy boots. One suspects the tango suited him; it is, after all, a dance that rewards restraint and impeccable timing.
Duvall outlasted nearly everyone he started with. Brando went mad, Nicholson went cartoon, Pacino started shouting for no reason. Duvall simply kept turning up, quieter and better, in everything from Lonesome Dove to Days of Thunder and Falling Down, reminding younger actors that acting is not about volume but about listening. In an industry that mistakes noise for significance, his silence was revolutionary. He is survived by his wife, a great many horses, and a body of work that will not date because it was never fashionable in the first place. Somewhere, Tom Hagen is still advising caution, Colonel Kilgore is still waiting for the wind to change, and Mac Sledge is still singing about broken hearts and second chances. Robert Duvall has left the stage, but the smell of napalm lingers on.