US actor Robert Duvall dies at the age of 95: He didn’t want to be a star – culture

One of the time journeys that would be more than tempting for any admirer of American cinema would be to smoky New York in the 1950s. 109th Street corner Broadway, sixth floor. A very cheerful shared apartment had come together there, whose roommates were all supposed to turn Hollywood around, even if they of course didn’t know it at the time. Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman and, at times, Gene Hackman lived in the apartment.

Duvall studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater with the legendary Sanford “Sandy” Meisner. It trained almost three generations of stars, from Diane Keaton to Tom Cruise, and Duvall was also to become one of its most prominent graduates. “I had a feeling he was going to be the next Brando. I was sure he was going to be the chosen one, and I probably wasn’t,” his roommate Dustin Hoffman modestly told the magazine years later Vanity Fair.

Robert Duvall was nominated for a whopping seven Oscars in his career (and won for Tender Mercies/Comeback of Love, 1983). But he was always suspicious of the word “star.” “For someone to become a star is the dream of the agent, not the actor,” he said. And then liked to tell an anecdote from the filming of “The Great Santini” (1979): “When I shook the producer’s hand for the first time – I hadn’t even sat down yet – the keyword ‘Oscars’ was already mentioned. We hadn’t even started rehearsals yet. This whole industry is so greedy for the whole Oscar star system…”

Duvall was born in San Diego in 1931. In contrast to most of the other big names in the New Hollywood, which he would later help shape so much, for him the army came before art. He did his military service from 1953 to 1954, ultimately holding the rank of Private First Class. This training would later come in handy on the set of “Apocalypse Now.”

His first small but important film role was in the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Disturb the Nightingale.” The film became no less famous than the book. He played the mysterious Arthur “Boo” Radley. To do this, he dyed his hair white and is said to have avoided sunlight for six weeks in preparation in order to look as pale and scary as possible.

The film made Duvall known not only to audiences, but also to a number of young directors who were in the process of turning Hollywood’s old, outdated studio system inside out. He made “THX 1138” with the young George Lucas (before his “Star Wars” breakthrough) and “MASH” (1970) with Robert Altman. But the most important partner for the young Duvall (like for so many other newcomers at the time, from Al Pacino to Robert De Niro) was the rather manic but highly talented Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola cast him in Never Love a Stranger (1968). He also gave him one of the important supporting roles in “The Godfather” and “The Godfather II”. But most importantly, he gave him the role of Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now”.

Coppola’s delirious Vietnam War version of Joseph Conrad’s story “Heart of Darkness” has many legendary scenes. But the most legendary is probably the one in which fighter pilots fly over Duvall as Kilgore, who is, as usual, topless, and he says, while the explosions are booming nearby: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

A lot has been said and whispered about the filming of “Apocalypse Now” (not in the real Vietnam, but in the Philippines). The crew is high on drugs, especially the director, and most of the anecdotes are simply: true. Coppola’s wife Eleanor, who made an entire crazy documentary about the shoot, testified to this. But Duvall’s scene (so much concentration was probably possible after all) was shot in just one take. “There was no time to think,” he later told film critic Roger Ebert. “I heard over the radio that we only had the fighter jets available for 20 minutes, so I threw myself into it.”

Rushed in, that actually sums it up very well. Duvall put an end to the exaggerated pantomime of early Hollywood, the tradition of declaiming and grimacing. He brought a hard, raw naturalism to the screen because he didn’t just like people like Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore played. Is war Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore.

Did it bother him that, despite such appearances, he never quite achieved the great fame of other heroes of the time? De Niro was already playing in a different league, as were his old buddies Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. On the one hand, he always denied it – he didn’t want to be a star. On the other hand, he also made no secret, for example, about why he was no longer involved in “The Godfather III” (1990): “If you had paid Pacino twice my fee, I would have understood it. But you paid him three or four times as much…”

But Duvall also diligently promoted his position as an outsider. He was a die-hard Republican throughout his life, which might not have been so noticeable in the Midwest, but would definitely have been noticeable in Hollywood, which is usually quite liberal. He supported George W. Bush (and was invited to his inauguration in 2001), and later he was also a supporter of John McCain.

Duvall was married a total of four times. He has been in a relationship with his fourth wife Luciana since 1997. The couple married in 2004 and the marriage lasted. Both of them have exactly the same birthday, January 5th.

As Luciana announced on Facebook, Robert “Bob” Duvall died peacefully on Sunday surrounded by his family. He was 95 years old.