Robert Duvall

Robert Selden Duvall (born January 5, 1931) is an American actor.

With a career spanning seven decades, he is the recipient of an Academy Award, four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Duvall was born January 5, 1931, in San Diego, California, to Mildred Virginia Duvall (Hart), an amateur actress, and Admiral William Howard DuVall, a Virginia-born United States Navy rear admiral.

The second of three sons, he has an elder brother, William Jr. and a younger brother, John (1934–2000), who was an entertainment lawyer.

His mother was a relative of American Civil War General Robert E. Lee, and a member of the Lee Family of Virginia, while his father was a descendant of settler Mareen Duvall.

Duvall was raised in the Christian Science religion and has stated that, while it is his belief, he does not attend church.

He grew up primarily in Annapolis, Maryland, site of the United States Naval Academy.

He recalled: "I was a Navy brat. My father started at the Academy when he was 16, made captain at 39 and retired as a rear admiral."

He attended Severn School in Severna Park, Maryland, and The Principia in St. Louis, Missouri.

While appearing at the Gateway Theatre in the second half of the 1950s, Duvall was also appearing at the Augusta Civic Theatre, the McLean Theatre in Virginia and the Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

Arguably his stage debut was in its 1952 season when he played the Pilot in Laughter In The Stars, an adaptation of The Little Prince, at what was then the Gateway Theatre.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, in 1953.

His father had expected him to attend the Naval Academy, but Duvall said "I was terrible at everything but acting—I could barely get through school".

He again defied his father by serving in the United States Army after the Korean War (from August 19, 1953, to August 20, 1954) leaving the Army as private first class.

After a year's absence when he was with the U.S. Army (1953–1954), Duvall returned to Gateway in its 1955 summer season, playing: Eddie Davis in Ronald Alexander's Time Out For Ginger (July 1955), Hal Carter in William Inge's Picnic (July 1955), Charles Wilder in John Willard's The Cat And The Canary (August 1955), Parris in Arthur Miller's The Crucible (August 1955), and John the Witchboy in William Berney and Howard Richardson's Dark of the Moon (September 1955).

In the winter of 1955, Duvall attended the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, under Sanford Meisner, on the G.I. Bill.

During his two years there, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and James Caan were among his classmates.

While studying acting, he worked as a Manhattan post office clerk.

Duvall remains friends today with fellow California-born actors Hoffman and Hackman, whom he knew during their years as struggling actors.

In 1955, Duvall roomed with Hoffman in a New York City apartment while they were studying together at the Playhouse.

Around this time, he also roomed with Hackman, while working odd jobs such as clerking at Macy's, sorting mail at the post office, and driving a truck.

Duvall began his professional acting career with the Gateway Playhouse, an Equity summer theater based in Bellport, Long Island, New York.

The playbill of Dark of the Moon indicated that he had portrayed the Witchboy before and that he will "repeat his famous portrayal" of this character for the 1955 season's revival of this play.

For Gateway's 1956 season (his third season with the Gateway Players), he played the role of Max Halliday in Frederick Knott's Dial M for Murder (July 1956), Virgil Blessing in Inge's Bus Stop (August 1956), and Clive Mortimer in John Van Druten's I Am a Camera (August 1956).

The playbills for the 1956 season described him as "an audience favorite" in the last season and as having "appeared at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and studied acting with Sandy Meisner this past winter".

In its 1957 season, Duvall appeared as Mr. Mayher in Agatha Christie's Witness For The Prosecution (July 1957), as Hector in Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnivall (July 1957), and the role which he once described as the "catalyst of his career": Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge (from July 30 to August 3, 1957, and directed by Ulu Grosbard, who was by then a regular director at the Gateway Theatre).

Miller himself attended one of Duvall's performances as Eddie, and during that performance he met important people which allowed him, in two months, to land a "spectacular lead" in the Naked City television series.

Duvall began his career on TV with minor roles in 1960 on Playhouse 90 and the Armstrong Circle Theatre TV series before transitioning to Broadway and film.

He made his feature film acting debut portraying Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Other early roles include Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), Bullitt (1968), True Grit (1969), M*A*S*H (1970), THX 1138 (1971), Joe Kidd (1972), and Tomorrow (1972), the last of which was developed at the Actors Studio and is his personal favorite.

Duvall made his Broadway debut in the play Wait Until Dark in 1966.

His other Oscar-nominated films include The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Great Santini (1979), The Apostle (1997), A Civil Action (1998), and The Judge (2014).

Other notable roles include The Outfit (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Network (1976), True Confessions (1981), The Natural (1984), Days of Thunder (1990), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Rambling Rose (1991), Falling Down (1993), The Paper (1994), The Scarlet Letter (1995), Sling Blade (1996), Open Range (2003), Four Christmases (2008), Crazy Heart (2009), Get Low (2010), Jack Reacher (2012), and Widows (2018).

Throughout his career, Duvall has starred on numerous television programmes.

He returned to the stage in David Mamet's play American Buffalo in 1977, earning a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play nomination.

Duvall won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film Tender Mercies (1983).

"That's led to some confusion in the press," he explained in 1984, "Some stories have me shooting it out with the Commies from a foxhole over in Frozen Chosin. Pork Chop Hill stuff. Hell, I barely qualified with the M-1 rifle in basic training".

While stationed at Camp Gordon (now Fort Eisenhower) in Georgia, Duvall acted in an amateur production of the comedy Room Service in nearby Augusta, Georgia.

His other Emmy-nominated roles are in the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), the HBO film Stalin (1992), and the TNT film The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996).

He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series for the AMC limited series Broken Trail (2007).