>>22246The actor did not slow down as he neared his 80th birthday: In 2009 he appeared in John Hillcoat’s “The Road”; starred in the small but well-liked “Get Low,” in which he played a bearded hermit who is, to use Roger Ebert’s phrase, “a sly old twinkler”; and did a supporting turn in and produced “Crazy Heart,” which reminded many of Duvall’s “Tender Mercies.”
The actor reunited with “Lonesome Dove” screenwriter Bill Wittliff for 2014’s “A Night in Old Mexico” and the same year starred in “The Judge” as a jurist accused of a hit-and-run murder and defended by the son (Robert Downey Jr.) who represents everything he despises about the law. The film, said Variety, “pivots on a simple yet inspired stroke of casting, pitting Duvall’s iconic gravitas against Downey’s razor-sharp wit, and then supplying no shortage of opportunities for both men to chew the scenery.”
Duvall drew his seventh Oscar nomination for his work in the film.
In 2015, the actor’s first directorial effort since 2002’s “Assassination Tango,” the ambitious indie feature “Wild Horses,” premiered at SXSW.
One of his final screen roles came in Scott Cooper’s “The Pale Blue Eye” in 2022.
Born in San Diego, Duvall was the son of a Navy rear admiral and grew up in various parts of the country, but especially Annapolis, Md., site of the U.S Naval Academy. It was actually at the insistence of his parents and teachers that Duvall began to study drama. After graduating from Principia College and the completion of his military service, Duvall studied under Sanford Meisner at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse.
He hung out with friends like Robert Morse, Hackman and Hoffman. A one-night only performance of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” in 1957 directed by Grosbard led to television work on “Naked City” and guest appearances on “The Defenders,” “Armstrong Circle Theater,” “The FBI” and other shows.
Through the ’60s, even after the enormous success of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” he subsisted on character roles in films including “Captain Newman M.D.,” “The Chase,” “The Detective,” “True Grit” and “Bullitt.” And he was a staple in Westerns such as “Lawman,” “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid” and “Joe Kidd.”
But he was also doing fine work in the theater in “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” “Call Me by My Rightful Name,” “The Days and Nights of Beebee Fenstermaker” and a full-fledged Off Broadway production of “A View From the Bridge” in 1965, co-starring Jon Voight and Susan Anspach.
Urban crime dramas were his other staple along with Westerns. They included, during the 1970s, “Badge 373,” “Breakout” and Sam Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite.”
TV occasionally offered the actor a juicy, fully dimensional role. In 1979, he starred in the TV movie “Ike” as General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ten years later, he starred in the highly praised CBS miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” picking up an Emmy nomination. He starred as the Soviet dictator in the 1992 HBO film “Stalin,” for which he earned a second Emmy nom. In 1997, he drew an Emmy nomination for his role as the title Nazi in “The Man Who Captured Eichmann”; and in 2006, he not only toplined but also exec produced the miniseries “Broken Trail,” whose success put cabler AMC on the map as a producer of original content — and earned Duvall two Emmys, one for his performance and another, shared with the other producers, for outstanding miniseries. For HBO, he appeared in the 2012 telepic “Hemingway and Gelhorn,” in which he played a Russian general.
He is survived by his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza, with whom he starred in “Assassination Tango.”