Robert Duvall 1931-2026

Robert Duvall, star of Apocalypse Now and The Godfather, dies at age of 95 1

He had the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas, or a three-star general playing the country music circuit

Andrew Pulver

17 Feb 2026 - The Guardian

Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, M*A*S*H and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.

PHOTOGRAPH: PICTURELUX/ALAMY 

Robert Duvall in probably his most famous role, 

the cavalry-hatted Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979)

“Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” wrote his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a message on Facebook. “To the world, he was an Academy Awardwinning actor, a director, a storyteller. To me, he was simply everything.”

Duvall was perhaps best known for his role as the cavalry-hatted Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, released in 1979. But he also made an immense impact as consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, the reclusive Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird at the start of his career, and many supporting and character roles throughout the ensuing decades. He was nominated seven times for an Oscar, winning once, for best actor in 1984 for Tender Mercies as a country music singer.

Born in San Diego, California, in 1931, the son of a naval officer, he studied drama at college in St Louis, Missouri, and briefly joined the army. In 1955 he enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York (alongside James Caan, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman).

Duvall worked steadily in TV and theatre, including an award-winning role in a 1965 production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, directed by Ulu Grosbard, and won his first film role as the mysterious Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, released in 1962.

Further small roles in Bullitt (1968) and True Grit (1969) consolidated his reputation, but it was his role in M*A*S*H that brought him to wider attention.

Duvall cemented his connection with the Hollywood new wave with the lead role in George Lucas’ 1970 debut feature, the dystopian sci-fi parable THX 1138; Tom Hagen in the first two Godfather films; and Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.

He also continued to appear in more mainstream films, including The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Network (1976), and The Natural (1984).

Duvall made his directorial debut in 1983 with Angelo, My Love, a drama about a Romany street kid in New York. Despite his Oscar for Tender Mercies, lead roles rarely came his way, but he was a commanding supporting presence throughout the 80s and 90s, appearing in a wide range of films: the Dennis Hopper-directed gang thriller Colors; the Tom Cruise blockbuster Days of Thunder (1990), and the Margaret Atwood adaptation The Handmaid’s Tale (1990).

In 1992, he returned to TV to play Stalin in an award-winning HBO series directed by Ivan Passer. Another lead role came his way in 1997, in his second directorial effort, The Apostle, in which he plays a preacher who kills his wife’s lover. He received his third best actor Oscar nomination for the role.

Duvall would direct two more films – Assassination Tango in 2002 and the western Wild Horses in 2015. He continued to appear in a wide variety of films, from Hollywood thrillers such as The Gingerbread Man and Gone in 60 Seconds, to leftfield dramas such as We Own the Night and The Road.

He continued working through the 2010s, achieving another Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in 2015 for The Judge, becoming at the time the oldest male actor ever nominated.

Duvall was married four times: to Barbara Benjamin from 1964-81, to Gail Youngs (1982-86), to Sharon Brophy (1991-95), and to Luciana Pedraza, whom he married in 2005. He had no children.

***

Subtle, outrageous, playful ... just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile

17 Feb 2026 - The Guardian

Peter Bradshaw

Robert Duvall was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American virility, and he put energy and heart into the movies for more than 60 years. Just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile. That handsome face and head gave him the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas, or a three-star general playing the country music circuit. Famously bald, he looked the same age almost all his acting life: for ever in his vigorous 40s.

Duvall had a long, rich career, but it was destiny to be chiefly known for two sensational, very different roles given to him by Francis Ford Coppola in the 70s.

One was Tom Hagen, the quiet consigliere to the Corleone crime family in The Godfather (1972). The second was the surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979), who with his “Air Mobile” division of helicopters leads a gigantic daylight attack on a Vietnamese village, with speakers blaring The Ride of the Valkyries.

Duvall’s Hagen is one of his subtlest and most misunderstood performances. He is calm and reserved, an administrator. Yet it is mild Hagen who is responsible for the most macabre act of violence in the whole Godfather canon: the horse’s head in the bed.

Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) had tasked him with flying out to Los Angeles to meet a certain movie producer who was refusing to cast Johnny Fontane – the Sinatra-esque singer who is Vito’s godson. The producer diplomatically entertains Hagen to dinner at his lavish Hollywood home, having shown him the racehorse in his stables: his pride and joy. But he still refuses to have anything to do with Fontane.

Hagen leaves, apparently accepting the decision. The following morning we see the horrifying result. It is an extraordinary act of psychopathic ingenuity and daring. Back in New York, Hagen is solicitously asked by Vito if he is tired and Hagen just shrugs that he “slept on the plane”.

There is something of the same steel in Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, who booms, shirtless, while squatting athletically down on his haunches to address the men: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” He has nothing but contempt for the enemy because they don’t understand his love of surfing: “Charlie don’t surf!” And he brushes off a subordinate’s incomprehension: “What do you know about surfing, Major? You’re from goddamned New Jersey!” Duvall delivers these mysterious arias of craziness with absolute conviction.

But my favourite of Duvall’s films is the one that was his passion project: The Apostle (1997), in which he was writer, producer, director and star. He is the lowchurch preacher Euliss F “EF” Dewey, who has lost his wife and children to the booze. Drunk, he shows up at his kid’s baseball match and fatally hits his estranged wife’s new boyfriend with a bat; he goes on the run, winding up in Louisiana where he sets up a new church and becomes a much-loved figure in the town.

This is a glorious performance, with something playful in the flights of preaching fancy, especially when holding forth on the radio, in a sporting stance at the microphone, one foot forward, he bellows genially about “holy ghost power!”

Duvall always had power, and a little of that power has left the movies today.