"I get disillusioned with modern Hollywood, especially all these big-budget films. With $100 million you could make ten great independent films. It's a shame, although that can make it more interesting, searching for things that interest you, working with young people. You can learn a lot from them, as they can learn from you. You've got to keep learning and taking an interest. You got to have hobbies."
"But what's funny is that while people internationally remember me most for Kilgore, in most of America people recognise me from Lonesome Dove. And of all the parts I've played, and while The Godfather was much better directed, Lonesome Dove is my favourite. I love westerns."
(1983 comment on Francis Ford Coppola)"Coppola`s talented. I`m pissed that he cut a scene that would have given the audience an insight into my character in "Apocalypse Now," but he`s talented."
(On James Dean) "I don`t think he was that great. He was good, but there was Brando, and there was founding member Steven Hill in the Actor`s Studio, those were the two guys. James Dean came in third. Dean was talented, obviously. But he died at a good time."
"Everybody likes to win. One of the biggest disappointments was when I didn`t get an Emmy for Lonesome Dove. It`s political. It can be a popularity contest."
"Being a star is an agent`s dream, not an actors."
"You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you`re making a fiction film, it`s entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible."
Times Online, December 9, 2007"I never wanted to follow in my father's footsteps, but when I was drafted into the army, I went along. And when they asked if I wanted to do officers' training, I said, 'No way.' Initially it was my parents that pushed me into acting because I was floundering around. I was a little sceptical but they nudged me into it."
"You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it`s so rich."
"We either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible."
"We all have a cradle-to-the-grave journey to make and, in between, what do you do? There`s got to be something hereafter."
"Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there`s always room for good films."
"On my last two marriages they had to sign a prenuptial, and that's kind of a defeatist thing going in. The first one, I wanted out, and that was the hardest thing because of the guilt. I'm not Jewish or Irish, but I had some guilt because I left her! The second one would've stayed. She was a good person underneath, and in some ways I cared for her the most. This last one would've taken the farm."
(directors that have influenced him as a director)Ulu Grosbard on stage and in True Confessions, very much so. Coppola in a different way, he's more of a literary guy than a behavior guy sometimes, but I watched one of those behind-the-scenes documentaries and I realized he knew a lot about acting. He said to an actor, "I don't care where you end up, just go." A guy like Kenneth Loach or Scorsese or Ulu Grosbard helps you by setting the atmosphere, and then it comes through you anyway. I've seen actors who've worked with these guys be not nearly as good under other auspices. People say bigger than life, but nothing's bigger than life. And now people are stuck on this term over the top. Granted, sometimes there are people with big personalities and they're not over the top, their temperament is such that that's what it is. You play within the confines of the temperament, it's going to be big at times and not over the top.
"I've always been a late bloomer. I did a lot of theater, did okay in some parts here and there, but I hadn't lived a lot. A lot of kids today are better actors as youngsters than we were. In some ways they're more sophisticated, more open--they have TV and movies. When I was coming up, in some ways I had a sheltered background and I feel I didn't have much to offer. I feel like I got better as I got older."
"To be more aware of myself, more aware of people, to be laid back enough to be open and to expand and not be judgmental. Actors are as vicious as these guys on Wall Street or anyplace. Maybe it's always that way, but I'm really surprised when some of the young actors I know rip the shit out of each other. So you have to give credit, and by giving credit it keeps you on guard: if you feel somebody's good, then you come up with something. You shouldn't feel you have all the answers, you shouldn't become that arrogant, because then you stop growing. So you say, Oh God that guy's good, ooh, I don't know, let me try something. To admit that keeps the growth process going."
(on working with Marlon Brando)"When I first worked with Brando he called me into his dressing room and we talked. I said, "What do you think of the script? I think it's okay." "I think it's pretty shitty," he said. Then I said to my wife, "This guy's great, we're going to be like friends!" And then we spoke a little on the set--and after that, for about eight weeks he wouldn't speak to me. I thought, What a narcissistic peacock. He seemed full of himself. A guy with all these causes, he can't say good morning to people. I'd told my wife we were going to be great friends, and I figured out he probably knew I'd expected that, so he snubbed me. It was nice to work around him even though he wasn't a particularly pleasant guy."
"My career at one point was like a railroad track. After I did The Godfather, pretty many things happened, and the other railroad track I had was Horton Foote's work. If I had had nothing but that, it would have been a nice little career. It goes back to the Neighborhood Playhouse, when I did hook into a part emotionally, which it's always hard for a young actor to do. In The Midnight Caller I had to weep every night and come on stage drunk, and it seemed to go over pretty well. One night the lights went out and we kept going. Horton came to see it with Robert Mulligan and Kim Stanley, and they liked it. A few years later they were casting To Kill a Mockingbird and Horton's wife Lily remembered me, and then they saw me on Naked City in an episode called The One Marked Hot Gives Cold, about a guy who's falsely accused of child molesting, and they said okay and I got the part. Then we did his play Tomorrow off-Broadway about 1966."
(his idea for Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now)"My idea for him. I did a little research in between the two times I shot and found out that the head of Air Cavalry used to go deer hunting twice a week and got killed that way. To overcome the tedium and boredom of war, they played games. One Israeli general always looked for a place to snorkel dive. They know their craft and their trade well enough, like us actors, that they look for crazy things to do when they're working. Kilgore was a guy who liked to surf, he had a hobby, and in this particular war they could exist side by side. By the time the movie came out I didn't care, it wasn't my project but there was a scene Coppola edited out where I save a baby's life. I say, "Put him in my helicopter." So he's saving a baby after he's probably killed its parents. We'd heard this was a true story. Maybe somebody told Coppola, "Let's make this guy one way or the other," but it was another contradiction and a nice moment."
(on filming Apocalypse Now)"It was chaotic. To get up in those helicopters and look down at those scenes that approximated this war was really vivid, like it was real. Coppola said it was like being in a war, but it wasn't nobody died, although it was dangerous being in those helicopters. The first two weeks in those helicopters I was an amateur, it was ridiculous, I was scared. I don't like heights. When they changed lead actors, we reshot stuff and I'd gotten pretty much okay about it, but I had to get used to it, and then a certain freedom came out."
(on how he come to acting)"My dad and my mother pushed me into it. For a military family, that was kind of unusual. We put on skits for guests; my brother was a singer, my mother had been an amateur actress, and there was music and singing on my father's side of the family. They maybe wanted me to go to the Naval Academy, but they could see that wouldn't work. They said "Well, rather than being drafted and go fight in Korea, let's see if we can't find him something to do." I was kind of foundering around in school, and they recommended acting as an expedient thing to get through. I'm glad they did. It was a small college in Illinois with a good drama coach. We did all kinds of plays, and I got into summer theater and one thing led to another. When I got out of the Army I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse and all that. They began to see I was real serious and they accepted that."
"To this day, I still think Lonesome Dove is my best part."
"The money part is one of the most difficult things. Coppola always said I should do a tango movie. If it hadn`t been for him, I don`t know where we would have gotten the money."
"Spending two years on my uncle`s ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns."
"My uncle always said that I could have been a rancher."
"My father`s people are from Fairfax in northern Virginia, just across the Mason-Dixon line. So it was an honour to play Lee, he was a great general."
"It`s no big thing, but you make big things out of little things sometimes."
"It's a privilege for me to work as a professional actor. I am very proud of that, and I still got a lot in me before they start wiping away the drool."
(on why he didn't do The Godfather III)“Why were they doing this? They were doing it for money, because Coppola’s always looking for money. He lives high on the hog. I figured if I was going to do it, come up with some real money."
(on Marlon Brando)"When we did The Chase, he was talking and he turned to act as an extension of what occurred before the scene. I think that offhandedness is pretty special. I learned that from him. I said to my wife, “We’re going to be like brothers. I love this guy.” Then he wouldn’t even say good morning for eight weeks. He’d just walk past you. I wasn’t used to people like that."
(about Scottish footballer Ally McCoist)“McCoisty. What a character! I said to Albert Finney, I’m working with this guy McCoist, the footballer, I’m gonna make an actor out of him,” and Finney said
[Duvall puts on gravelly-posh Finney accent] ‘Shahp as a tack!’ He was right."
(about Michael Owen)“McCoist was a good footballer, of course, but not as good as Michael Owen. I love Michael Owen, he’s great. He almost beat Argentina single-handed. I got on the phone to people, I was saying, ‘You should see this kid, he’s brilliant.’ I looked into his record, and I found that in your version of ‘little league’ when he was 12 years old he scored 13 goals in 18 minutes one game. Incredible!”
(about Scottish footballer Jimmy Johnston)“I met a lot of characters in my time, Texas, here, there, all over. The biggest I ever met was Jimmy Johnston. We spent about two hours talking. What an entertaining guy, just to sit and talk for two hours. People say the Scots are dour, but they’re not: they’re like the Italians, they throw things, they curse!”
(about his career)“I always figured that I was a sort of a late bloomer. I felt my time was later than guys like Jimmy Caan, De Niro, Pacino. It’s later now, I guess I’m still around! In fact, I’m getting more offers than ever. That’s fine with me. They want me to do Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea.”
(asked about if there are any downsides to being an autheuristic director)"I suppose there is a downside but I love it. I would like to do more but I don’t have any ideas."
(on acting)"You can't concoct or push ahead something other than what you have at that moment as yourself, as that character. It's you at that moment in time. Between action and cut, it's a nice world, but you can't force that any more than you can force it in life."
"Stripping away artifice, it's the constant standard I aim for in acting, to approximate life. People talk about being bigger than life, but there's nothing bigger than life."
"You're always looking for a way into the part. I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft, using yourself to create a character."
(On his auteur turn with The Apostle)"It's been accepted by the secular hip community, the film people, and by the religious people as well, and they're the toughest. I feel I'm a better person for making the movie; there's a certain sense of accomplishment that maybe I've made something that matters."
(During an interview)Interviewer: "You are closely associated with the Western. Where does your love of the genre come from?"
Robert Duvall: "It's our deal. The English have Shakespeare, the French have Moliere and the Western is definitely ours. When I was a kid I went to my uncle's ranch in Montana for two summers, he had a big cattle and sheep place out there. And you know, when I first went to Hollywood I would take out a horse every day, bare back, English saddle, western saddle and I learned to jump a horse, so I would have a seat on a horse, because most actors can draw a pistol but they can't ride a horse. So I wanted to do Westerns and it served me well. I think Westerns are our thing. People say they don't sell but they do sell and as soon as you make them they say: “When are you going to do another one?” In England, they love Westerns, wide-open spaces and all that. I just like doing 'em. At the end of my career I thought maybe I could do a gun fighter in a Western who is mute, so I wouldn't have any lines."
[Duvall laughs]"Apocalypse Now took so long to come out, it was almost anticlimactic when it did. Coppola left a scene out, which I felt made it more complete: I save a baby's life. I've killed the parents, and I send it back in my helicopter to be dealt with at the hospital. Then for some reason they cut it out. Maybe in a longer version it'll be back in again."
-----------------Quotes from Duvall about his wife Luciana Pedraza-----------------
"Ironically, despite the fact my wife is from Argentina, I introduced her to the tango."
"Today she goes everywhere with me, probably to keep an eye on me. She's a very bright and shrewd woman. I've worked with many directors, but my wife directs me in life some.
"Her grandmother was the first licensed lady pilot in Argentina and her grandfather flew the president. I call her 'the General'."
(asked if he wishes he'd met his bride earlier in life, he unleashes a hearty laugh) "No, because if I'd met her earlier on, she wouldn't have been born! And when I first met her father he said, 'I don't know whether to call you father or son'."
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(about “I love the smell of napalm in the morning" line from Apocalypse Now)“People will usually say that line like only they know it and only I know it, and they’re the only ones that know it. Course, when I was getting ready to do The Apostle, I met with preachers all across America, and they all claimed they didn’t go to movies. And one said, ‘Oh, I think I know who Mr. Duvall is,’ and he called back after doing some research and said, ‘Yeah, you had a famous line in a movie where you said, I love the smell of gasoline in the morning!’” He had it all wrong.”
(about his We Own the Night role)“My character was interesting, a guy that’s a widower, who’s trying to balance two sons that are so different, not that they’re directly with him, but that aspect of a family, trying to keep the semblance of a family after the wife is gone and I was called in as a replacement. I came in after they had started, but James (Gray, the director) is good at explaining things. He’s a terrific director. He’s an actor’s director, more than most. A lot of them have their fingers crossed, and do takes again and again and again, and they don’t know what they’re looking for. Jimmy Caan, when he worked with James in New York, told me how much he liked him. He’s his favorite young director since Coppola. He says, ‘Jimmy Gray’s the kind of guy who gets so excited, if the take goes good, he has to stuff a towel in his mouth to stop from laughing to spoil the take.’ It was a fun set to work with.”
(on winning an Emmy for his role in the AMC miniseries Broken Trail)“I was a little nervous, to tell you the truth, usually I’m not. But the point is, it’s a different crowd. Some of the people got up there and did something and everybody laughs, and I don’t know what they’re laughing at. But it was good, because many years ago, we never won an Emmy for Lonesome Dove, which was bewilderment to me, I mean, if you’re going to go for awards, that would be it. But I love Westerns. I really love Westerns. It was nice to win something for something you like.”
(On Assassination Tango) “Some people didn’t like it, but I guess it’s like anything some people did, some people didn’t. I guess more people went for The Apostle, but I liked Assassination Tango, too. To use the real people, the real tango dancers, they know how to sit in the club with a cigarette, as opposed to what a real actor would do. And somebody said, ‘Well why didn’t you just do a documentary,’ and well, that’s kind of a strange thing to say, because it’s not that easy to get that kind of behavior within real time. But I enjoyed making that movie."
(about tango dancing)“Down in South America, it’s a very quiet thing, the tango. It’s not all this stuff. In the clubs you go and you just watch the old guys walk. At the beginning and ending of the dance is the walk. And now, since the ’50s, it’s gotten into tango for export, it’s much more energetic for the young people. They do it very well. But still, based on the old guys, it was a different thing. I know one little girl down there, I used her in the movie, she danced over the end credits. Geraldine Roja, she’s great. And I used to go behind the door and practice, I’d be embarrassed to tango in front of her. And she learned from the clubs.
(on living in Buenos Aires) “My wife and I, we have a little hotel up in the country. It has a world ranking. One of the best small romantic hotels in the world. Seven suites, up near the Andes and you can go to watch the polo matches. They haven’t lost in like ninety years, nobody’s beaten them. Or you can go to a soccer match. Everything’s in the city. Big wide avenues, with a race track here and two polo field here. Restaurants are open all the time, so sometimes you don’t eat till late. I like our steaks up here better. I didn’t want to tell them that. There’s fifty million heads of cattle there. They don’t age it, they don’t corn feed it, and they eat it too well done for me. I mean, they’re barbeques are great. My sister cooks right on the ground with nothing but sea salt. The meat can be great, but it’s just the way they cook steaks.”
“I was in Dallas, way back, years ago, I was at a bar standing against a wall, and it was so crowded, and some guy walked by and looked at me in that way, as if only he recognized me. And he points right at me, and he says, ‘Terry Bradshaw.’” He was so sure and he just got it totally wrong.”
