Robert Duvall

Acting · 1931–2026 · San Diego, California, USA

Robert Selden Duvall (January 5, 1931 – February 15, 2026) was an American actor and filmmaker. 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.

Full biography

Duvall began appearing in theater in the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s, playing Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and appearing in Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), as Major Frank Burns in the blockbuster comedy M*A*S*H (1970) and the lead role in THX 1138 (1971), as well as Horton Foote's adaptation of William Faulkner's Tomorrow (1972), which was developed at The Actors Studio and is his personal favorite. This was followed by a series of critically lauded performances in commercially successful films.

He has starred in numerous films and television series, including The Twilight Zone (1963), Bullitt (1968), True Grit (1969), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Network (1976), Apocalypse Now (1979), Tender Mercies (1983) (which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor), The Natural (1984), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Days of Thunder (1990), Falling Down (1993), Secondhand Lions (2003), The Judge (2014), and Widows (2018). His final role was in The Pale Blue Eye (2022).