His wife, Luciana Duvall, remembered the commitment he brought to his work, saying that he gave himself fully to his characters and to the human truth behind them.
Following his death, fellow actors and filmmakers including Al Pacino and Francis Ford Coppola paid tribute to his extraordinary talent and the authenticity that defined his performances.
Awards tell only part of Robert Duvall’s story.
Tom Hagen. Mac Sledge. Bill Kilgore. Bull Meechum. Gus McCrae.
Decades after those performances were filmed, the people he portrayed still seem remarkably alive.
Perhaps that is the clearest measure of his talent.
Robert Duvall didn’t simply play memorable characters.
He made audiences believe those people had existed before we met them—and would somehow continue existing after the screen went dark.
