Actor and director Robert Duvall was born on January 5, 1931 in San Diego, California, the son of a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, Illinois), then served a two-year hitch in the Army after graduating in 1953. Duvall began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I. Bill in 1955, studying with Sanford Meisner along with Dustin Hoffman, with whom Duvall shared an apartment. Both were close to another struggling young actor named Gene Hackman. Meisner cast Duvall in the play "The Midnight Caller" by Horton Foote, a link that would prove critical to his career as it was Foote who recommended Duvall to play the mentally disabled Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, his motion picture debut.

Duvall began making a name for himself as a stage actor in New York, winning an Obie Award in 1965 playing incest-minded longshoreman Eddie Carbone in the off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge," a production for which his old roommate Hoffman was assistant director. He found steady work in episodic TV and appeared as a modestly billed character actor in motion pictures, appearing in Arthur Penn's The Chase with Marlon Brando, and in Robert Altman's Countdown and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People, both of which he co-starred with James Caan.

He was also memorable as the heavy who is shot by John Wayne at the climax to True Grit and was the first Major Frank Burns, creating the character in Altman's Korean War comedy MASH. He also appeared as the eponymous lead in George Lucas' directorial debut, THX 1138. It was Coppola, casting The Godfather, who reunited Duvall with Brando and Caan and provided him with his career breakthrough as Mob lawyer Tom Hagen. He received the first of his six Academy Award nominations for the role.

Thereafter, Duvall had steady work in featured roles in such films as The Godfather: Part II, The Killer Elite, Network, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and The Eagle Has Landed. Occassionally, this actor's actor got the chance to assay a lead role, most notably in Tomorrow, in which he was brilliant as William Faulkner's inarticulate backwoods farmer. He was less impressive as the lead in Badge 373, in which he played a character based on real-life NYC policeman Eddie Egan, whom his old friend Gene Hackman had won an Oscar playing, in fictionalized form, as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.

It was his appearance as Lt. Colonel Kilgore in another Coppola picture, Apocalypse Now, which solidified Duvall's reputation as a great actor. He won his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and was named by the Guiness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor in the world! Duvall created one of the most memorable characters ever assayed on film, and gave the world the memorable phrase "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

Subsequently, Duvall proved one of the few established character actors to move from supporting to leading roles, with his Oscar-nominated turns in The Great Santini and Tender Mercies, the later of which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Now at the summit of his career, Duvall seemed to be afflicted with the fabled "Oscar Curse" that had overwhelmed the careers of fellow Academy Award winners Luise Rainer, Rod Steiger, and Cliff Robertson. He could not find work equal to his talents, either due to his post-Oscar salary demands or due to a lack of perception in the industry that he truly was leading man material. He did not appear in the The Godfather: Part III as the studio would not give in to his demands for a salary commensurate with that of Al Pacino, who was receiving $5 million to reprise Michael Corleone.

His greatest achievement in his immediate post-Oscar period was his acclaimed characterization of the grizzled Texas Ranger in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove, for which he received an Emmy nomination. He received a second Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the Soviet dictator Stalin, and a third Emmy nomination playing Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in _Man Who Captured Eichmann, The (1996)_ .

The shakeout of his career doldrums was that Duvall eventually settled back into his status as one of the premier character actors in the industry, rivaled only by his old friend Gene Hackman. Duvall, unlike Hackman, also has directed pictures, including the documentary _We're Not the Jet Set (1975)_ , Angelo My Love and Assassination Tango. As writer-director, Duvall gave himself one of his most memorable roles, the lead of the preacher on the run from the law in The Apostle, a brilliant performance for which he received his third Best Actor nomination and fifth Oscar nomination overall. The film brought Duvall back to the front ranks of great actors, and was followed by a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for A Civil Action.

Robert Duvall will long be remembered as one of the great naturalistic American screen actors in the mode of Spencer Tracy and his frequent co-star Marlon Brando. His performances as Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird," Jackson Fentry in "Tomorrow," Tom Hagen in the first two "Godfather" movies, Frank Hackett in "Network," Colonel Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now," Bull Meechum in "The Great Santini," Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies," Gus McCrae in "Lonesome Dove," and Sonny Dewey in "The Apostle" rank as some of the finest acting ever put on film. It's a body of work that few actors can equal, let alone surpass.


The Godfather (1972): $36,000

Lived with Luciana Pedraza for seven years before marrying her in 2004. She is 41 years younger than him. Fractured several ribs in April 2002 after falling off a horse while rehearsing for role in Open Range (2003). Received star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. [18 September 2003] Can speak Spanish fluently. Being descended from Robert E. Lee, he can actually trace his family back to President George Washington. Washington himself had no biological children, but his wife, Martha Custis, did, and he adopted them after the death of Martha's first husband. Her son, John Custis, had a son of his own, Washington Custis, whose daughter, Mary Custis, was Robert E. Lee's wife. Interestingly, Duvall played Lee in Gods and Generals (2003), opposite Jeff Daniels, who had played Washington in The Crossing (1990). Furthermore, Harper Lee, the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird", is also descended from Robert E. Lee. Duvall starred in the adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). His father was a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy. While a struggling actor, he worked at a post office as a clerk but quit after six months. He says he didn't want to be there 20 years later, still working in a post office. In Gods and Generals (2003), played ancestor Robert E. Lee. The role was originally played by Martin Sheen in Gettysburg (1993). Duvall and Sheen starred together in the popular Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (1979). His father was of French Hugenot descent (with the family having immigrated to the U.S. in the 1700s), while his mother was of Anglo-Saxon descent, and is a direct descendant of General Robert E. Lee. His performance as "Mac Sledge" in Tender Mercies (1983) is ranked #14 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006). He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005. A staunch, lifelong supporter of the Republican party, Duvall was personally invited to George W. Bush's inauguration as President in 2001. Duvall attended the ceremony. Was considered for the role of "Brody" in the original Jaws (1975) film. Born to William Howard Duvall, an U.S. Navy admiral, and his wife Mildred Virginia Hart, an amateur actress. Ex-brother-in-law of John Savage and Jim Youngs. Put up $5 million of his own money to finance The Apostle after it was rejected by numerous studios. He says the work he is most proud of by far is his role as the former Texas Ranger "Augustus McCrae" in the 1990 TV miniseries "Lonesome Dove" (1989). Watched "Broken Trail" (2006) with President George W. Bush in a special screening at the White House. (11 June 2006). The middle of three brothers, his elder brother William Duvall and younger brother John Duvall both appeared as singers in his film Angelo My Love (1983).