‘Godfather’ and ‘Apocalypse Now’ actor Robert Duvall dead at 95

Robert Duvall, who played the smooth mafia lawyer inThe Godfatherand stole the show with his depiction of a surfing-crazed colonel inApocalypse Now, has died at the age of 95, his wife said yesterday. “Yesterday we said goodbye to my beloved husband, cherished friend, and one of the greatest actors of our time. Bob passed away peacefully at home,” she wrote.

Blunt-talking, prolific and glitz-averse, Duvall won an Oscar for best actor and was nominated six other times. Over his six decades-long career, he shone in both lead and supporting roles, and eventually became a director. “To the world, he was an Academy Award-winning actor, a director, a storyteller.

To me, he was simply everything,” Luciana Duvall said. “His passion for his craft was matched only by his deep love for characters, a great meal, and holding court.” Duvall won his Academy Award in 1983 for playing a washed-up country singer inTender Mercies. But his most memorable characters also included the soft-spoken, loyal mob consigliere Tom Hagen in the first two installments ofThe Godfatherand the maniacal Lieutenant Colonel William Kilgore in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War epicApocalypse Now.

[paywall]

The latter, which earned Duvall an Oscar nomination and made him a bona fide star after years playing lesser roles, sees him utter what is now one of cinema’s most famous lines. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” his war-loving character — bare chested, cocky and sporting a big black cowboy hat — muses as low-flying U.S. warplanes bomb a beachfront tree line where he wants to go surfing.

[/paywall]