Robert Duvall has passed away at age 95.
What a legendary actor. Time for the rundown. "The Godfather", "Apocalypse Now," "M*A*S*H", "The Conversation", "Network", "Tender Mercies", "The Natural", "Lonesome Dove", "Falling Down", "Sling Blade", "The Apostle", "Crazy Heart".
A few performance people not be aware of or may have forgotten: he was in an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone". He was also in Lucas' "THX 1138." He did a movie co-starring Bill Murray called "Get Low" - it's fine, it flew under the radar, but the movie doesn't live up to the cast.
And that's the thing, even in bad movies, Duvall was always good. I believe it was Roger Ebert who said that you could never catch Duvall "acting" - he always fully inhabited the character.
I would like to state my favorite performance of his but I would need to re-visit "Lonesome Dove" and "Tender Mercies" to really decide. It's been a long while. "Lonesome Dove" is Duvall's own favorite, by the way. For me, let's say, for any movie buffs reading this, my favorite performance of his is officially "The Apostle" but if we're all friends here and are able to open up without fear of mockery, my favorite may be "Days of Thunder." Sorry, he's just so good in it. A performance of his that astonishes me is "Sling Blade" - but I'm loathe to pick a "crazy" role as my favorite, it's also pretty brief.
Duvall on Westerns: "The Western is our genre in the United States of America. The English have Shakespeare, the French have Molière, the Russians have Chekhov, but we have the Western."
Norm Macdonald considered Duvall to be the greatest actor of all-time and got to interview him once. Here's that interview.
