The legendary American actor was nominated for seven Oscars and won for his role as a washed-up country singer in Tender Mercies.
Posted on February 16, 2026
Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall, best known for his work in The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, has died at age 95, his wife announced in a Facebook post.
“For each of his many roles, Bob gave everything to his characters and to the truth of the human spirit they represented,” Luciana Duvall said in a statement Monday.
Duvall was best known for playing hard-hitting roles, such as his portrayal of Tom Hagen, consigliere of the Corleone Mafia family in The Godfather.
He also played Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meechum in The Great Santini and the title character in Stalin, as well as broken and fallen characters in Tender Mercies and The Apostle.
Tributes have poured in for Hollywood greats. Former co-star Adam Sandler said Duvall was “one of the best actors we've ever had”, while Sopranos star Michael Imperioli paid tribute to “one of the greatest of all time”, who was “an actor's actor”.
Duvall, the son of a US Navy admiral and an amateur actress, grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, United States. After graduating from Principia College in Illinois and serving in the U.S. Army, he moved to New York City, where he roomed with Dustin Hoffman and befriended Gene Hackman when the three were struggling acting students.
After working on a variety of television shows, Duvall made a strong impression in his first forays onto the big screen, including his first film role as the mysterious recluse Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Duvall got the role at the suggestion of the film's screenwriter, Horton Foote, who had liked Duvall's work in one of his plays. Foote later wrote Tender Mercies, a 1983 film for which Duvall won the Academy Award for best actor as a washed-up country singer.
Duvall was nominated for six other Oscars, including for his work in Frances Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now. Duvall played surf-obsessed Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore.
The character's famous line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” became legendary.
In total, Duvall appeared in nearly 100 films. And when he got tired of Hollywood, he made his own movies. He wrote, directed, and earned an Oscar nomination as an actor for The Apostle, the story of a conflicted preacher.
Duvall did the same with Assassination Tango, a film that allowed him to showcase his passion for tango and Argentina, where he met his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza.
Duvall later divided his time between Los Angeles, Argentina and a farm in Virginia, where he converted the barn into a tango dance hall.
