Robert Selden Duvall was born in San Diego, California, on January 05, 1931. Duvall is the middle son of William Howard, a U.S. Navy admiral and Mildred Virginia, an amateur actress. Duvall has two brothers, his older brother, William the 2nd, teaches music at the University of Wisconsin and his younger brother is John, a lawyer. All three Duvall sons have sung professionally. Duvall's father was a Methodist and his mother was a Christian Scientist, and so he was reared in the Christian Science religion.
Duvall grew up in the various places in the United States, North, South, East, and West, where his father was assigned by the Navy. At age ten, Robert moved with his family to the East Coast and lived primarily in Annapolis, Maryland, near the United States Naval Academy. He attended Severn School in Severna Park, a preparatory school for the United States Naval Academy. He also lived on his uncle's ranch in Montana for a while. He says,"Spending two years on my uncle`s ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns."
Robert Duvall attended Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. He majored in history and government, eventually switching to the drama department, where he earned his degree. Duvall was more interested in athletics than in a scholarship. Duvall recalls, "Actually, I was never all that good an athlete." His parents urged him into becoming an actor. "I wasn't pushed into it, but suggested into it. They figured I did skits around the house. They figured I had a calling, or whatever, in that line." Actually, it was only after a professor at Principia College, urged his parents to persuade Duvall to change his major from social studies to dramatics. Duvall graduated from college with a BA degree in drama in 1953.
After college, Duvall was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1953. He served from August 19, 1953 to August 20, 1954, during the Korean War. His service number #52 346 646. While stationed at Camp Gordon (now known as Fort Gordon) in Georgia, Duvall acted in an amateur production of the comedy "Room Service" in nearby Augusta. Before leaving the army he achieved rank of Private First Class and awarded the National Defense Service Medal.
After graduating from Principia and doing Army service, Duvall moved to New York City in 1955. He enrolled in the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse on the G I. Bill. He studied drama under Sanford Meisner the acclaimed acting teacher while there.
While attending the Neighborhood Playhouse, Duvall supported himself with a number of odd jobs. He worked as a Manhattan post office clerk. Duvall recalls his postal job, saying "I used to work the midnight shift at the Post Office. I'd sleep a few hours and then go act. I had the job for six months. I had money in my pocket but I quit. I didn't want to still be at the Post Office five years later." While in New York, Duvall shared an apartment with two then-unknown actors, Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. Acting Career Begins
The Early 60s - The Late 80s
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The first break in Duvall's career came one night in 1957, at the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport, Long Island, where Ulu Grosbard, the director of the current Broadway production of American Buffalo, was also working. Under Grosbard's direction, Duvall played the lead, Eddie Carbone, the Brooklyn longshoreman seething with suppressed love for his niece, in a one-night-only studio production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. Miller was in the audience. Duvall later stated, "That play was a catalyst for my career. Because of that one night I met some people and things began to happen. In two months I got a spectacular lead in the Naked City television series, playing a gunman on a roof. Back then they did these shows live. Sixty minutes, live. I started cooking, right before the cameras. After that I did three or four more Naked City leads. They were usually heavies, emotional parts. It was great training. And as a direct result of them I got the Boo Radley part in Mockingbird."
Before his role as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, Duvall had other notable theatre credits, including the role of Doug in the premiere of Call Me By My Rightful Name in 1961 and the role of Bob Smith in the premiere of The Days and Nights of BeeBee Fenstermaker in 1962, both at Off-Broadway theatres. He won an Obie Award in 1965 for his performance of Eddie in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge at the Sheridan Square Playhouse, a production directed by Ulu Grosbard and Dustin Hoffman.
In 1959, Duvall made his first television appearance on Armstrong Circle Theatre in the episode The Jailbreak. He appeared regularly on television as a guest actor during the 1960s, often in action, suspense, detective, or crime dramas. His appearances during this time include performances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Naked City, The Untouchables, Route 66, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, T.H.E. Cat, and The Mod Squad to name just a few.
Finally at the age of 31 in 1962 came his 1st film debut, To Kill a Mockingbird. Mockingbird was the film version of Harper Lee's best-selling novel about life in a Southern town in the 1930's as seen through the eyes of children of a lawyer who accepts the unpopular task of defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. In a cast headed by Gregory Peck as the lawyer, Duvall was properly scary in the role of the mysterious recluse who lives next door.
For the next several years, he continued to appear in small film and television roles. This path led to major supporting parts in films with large ensemble casts, such as the repressed and self-righteous Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H in 1970 and the business-minded Mafia attorney Tom Hagen in The Godfather in 1972 and its sequel, The Godfather, Part II in 1974. The original 1972 role earned Duvall with an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role as Tom Hagen. In 1977, Duvall made his directorial debut with the documentary We're Not the Jet Set, about a Nebraska rodeo family. The film, which he also co-produced, was honored at the London Film Festival.
In Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's epic film about the war in Vietnam, Duvall plays a mad, surfing Air Force colonel. The film was in production for more than a year, with a budget that skyrocketed to more than $30,000,000. It took Francis Ford Coppola nearly three years to edit the footage. The film was ready for release by United Artists in June 1977. Though his part was relatively small, Duvall received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and won both a BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award for his role as Lt. Colonel Kilgore. His line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" from Apocalypse Now is now regarded as iconic in cinema history. The full text is as follows: "You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. But the smell! You know - that gasoline smell... the whole hill! Smelled like... victory.
(Pause)
Some day this war is going to end..."
The following year brought another Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actor in a Leading Role, as the macho Marine pilot Bull Meechum in The Great Santini. In 1977 Duvall returned to Broadway to appear as Walter Cole in David Mamet's American Buffalo. For his performance he received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Play. In 1983, Duvall starred in Tender Mercies with Tess Harper. Delivering a career performance as faded country singer, Mac Sledge, Duvall perfectly captured the pain, heartache and despair of a once beloved entertainer. For his role as Mac, Duvall won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, a Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. Duvall was said to have written the music, but the actor said he wrote only a few background, secondary songs. Duvall did do his own singing, insisting it be added to his contract that he sing the songs himself. Duvall said, "What's the point if you're not going to do your own singing? They're just going to dub somebody else? I mean, there's no point to that." Actress Tess Harper said, "Duvall inhabited the character so fully that she only got to know Mac Sledge and not Duvall himself." Director Bruce Beresford, too, said the transformation was so believable to him that he could feel his skin crawling up the back of his neck the first day of filming with Duvall. Beresford said of the actor, "Duvall has the ability to completely inhabit the person he's acting. He totally and utterly becomes that person to a degree which is uncanny."In 1989, Duvall appeared in the landmark mini-series Lonesome Dove in the role of Augustus "Gus" McCrae. He has stated in several forums, including CBS Sunday Morning, that this particular role was his personal favorite. He won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Emmy Award nomination. For his role as a former Texas Ranger, Duvall was trained in the use of Walker revolvers by the Texas marksman Joe Bowman.Still Going Strong
The 1990s - Present
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The 1990s were a good decade for Duvall. He has maintained a busy film career, sometimes appearing in as many as 3 - 4 in one year. Though not always successful, his films brought him steady work and great variety. Not many other actors could boast of playing such a diversity of characters, from a retired Cuban barber in 1993's Wrestling Ernest Hemingway to an ailing editor in The Paper in 1994, to the abusive father of a mentally impaired murderer in the harrowing Sling Blade in 1996, to James Earl Jones's brother in A Family Thing, in which he also produced. Duvall took on two very different father roles in 1998, first in the asteroid extravaganza Deep ImpactThe Gingerbread Man and then in Robert Altman's . A pet project that Duvall had tried to get off the ground for over a decade was in 1997, The Apostle. It was written by, directed by and starring Duvall. The Apostle told the tale of a fallen preacher (Duvall), who, through a course of deceptive practices, ultimately finds unexpected redemption. It was a huge critical hit and earned Duvall 9 wins and another Best Actor Oscar nomination.
In the early 2000s, he continued his balance between supporting roles in big-budget films and meatier parts in smaller efforts. He supported Nicolas Cage in Gone in 60 Seconds and Denzel Washington in John Q., but he also put out his second directorial effort, Assassination Tango, which allowed him to film one of his life's great passions -- the tango. Duvall played an aging, paranoid, dance-loving hit man in this offbeat film. In 2003, Kevin Costner gave Duvall an outstanding role in his old-fashioned western, Open Range, and Duvall responded with one of his most enjoyable performances. In 2005, he starred as Will Ferrell's highly competitive father in Kicking & Screaming. In the film, Thank You for Smoking, Duvall played a millionaire owner of a tobacco company dying of lung cancer, who sends his best lobbyist to convince Hollywood moguls to put more smoking back into movies.
Later in 2006, Duvall found himself back in familiar territory when he starred the western Broken Trail, a two-part miniseries about an old cowboy (Duvall) and his nephew (Thomas Haden Church) who come across 5 Chinese women kidnapped from their home and sold into sexual slavery seeking to find safe haven from their captors. For his role as Prentice Ritter in Broken Trail, Duvall won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie and he was nomintated for a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.
In 2007, he starred in We Own the Night as Burt Grusinsky, along side Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg. In 2008 he had only 1 film under his belt, Four Christmases. Duvall starred as Howard McVie, Vince Vaughn's father. Duvall began 2009, by lending his voice to the video game, The Godfather II as Tom Hagen. Also in 2009, Duvall teamed up with Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron in The Road, Duvall's role is only known as Old Man.
For 2010, Duvall currently has 2 films in production, The Last Full Measure and Crazy Heart. Duvall will star as Frank Pitsenbarger in The Last Full Measure. For Crazy Heart, he will star as Wayne Kramer. He also has a Tribes of October in pre-production set to be released in 2011.Duvall has been married four times, first to Barbara Benjamin from 1964 until 1975. He then married Gail Youngs, an actor in 1982, they later divorced in 1986. Duvall's next wife was, Sharon Brophy, a dance instructor. They married may 1, 1991, then later divorced in 1996. In 2005, Robert Duvall wed Luciana Pedraza, granddaughter of famous Argentine aviator Susana Ferrari Billinghurst. He met Pedraza on a street in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were both born on January 5, but Duvall is 41 years older. They have been together since 1997. Although, Duvall owns a small West Hollywood bungalow to do business there, but he spends most of his free time at his 362-acre farm in The Plains, Va., population 284. He shares the spread with his wife, Luciana Pedraza, three dogs and a few horses. The homestead features a barn he turned into a saloon with a dance floor and spittoons for visitors who enjoy chewing tobacco. The buckets, he says, need regular cleaning.
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