Robert Duvall

Robert Duvall was born January 5, 1931, in San Diego, California. Mr. Duvall first studied acting at Principia College in Illinois. After his graduation in 1955, he served a two-year tour of duty in the Korean War before moving to New York City, where he honed his formidable acting ability at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Sharing an apartment with fellow aspiring actor Dustin Hoffman, the pair developed their famed versatility under the tutelage of method acting guru Sanford Meisner. Performing often on the stage during this period, Duvall’s first commended performance was that of a longshoreman on Broadway in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge in 1957.

His first big film break came when he was cast to play Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley in the Academy Award-winning 1963 film, To Kill a Mockingbird. Although, he had no lines, and only a few seconds of film-time, the story line revolved around his character and his brief performance left a lasting impression. In 1969, after appearing in several roles in film and television, he won his first starring movie role in True Grit as outlaw Ned Pepper, the antagonist to John Wayne’s Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn. In 1970, he appeared in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, a satire about the war he actually participated in, and in 1972, delivered an acclaimed performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. For his portrayal of Tom Hagen, the adopted son of the Corleone family, he was honored with his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. In 1974, he revisited the role in The Godfather: Part II, and in 1979, teamed up Coppola again for Apocalypse Now, for which he was awarded another Best Supporting Actor nomination for his forceful rendering of Colonel Kilgour, one of his most famous roles.

In the next year, he won a Best Actor Oscar nomination for The Great Santini, in which he played a career Marine at war with his family. In 1983, he finally took home an Oscar from the Academy Awards, winning Best Actor for his compelling performance as a washed-up country singer in Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies. Since winning the prestigious award, the famously versatile actor has appeared in a string of excellent films, including The Natural (1984), Colors (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), The Plague (1992), The Scarlet Letter (1995), and Sling Blade (1996).

He has also acted on the small screen in the popular television miniseries, Lonesome Dove (1990), and the HBO original movie, Stalin (1992), for which he won a Best Actor Golden Globe Award. In 1997, he produced, directed, wrote, and starred in The Apostle, an absorbing narrative about the trials of Euliss ‘Sonny’ Dewey, a Southern evangelist. For this role, Duvall was again awarded a Best Actor Oscar nomination. In the next year, he appeared as Jerome Facher, a big business attorney in Steven Zaillian’s A Civil Action, a legal epic based on a true story.

Mr. Duvall is very involved in charity work with the homeless children of Argentina. He was recently there filming another movie close to his heart, Assasination Tango, co-starring his fiancee, Luciana Pedraza.

Robert Duvall has just completed Gods and Generals, a Civil War epic motion picture which is to be released in February of 2003.

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