'His friendship changed my life': 25 years with Robert Duvall

I first met Robert Duvall in a muddy field in Maryland in 2001, on the set of Gods and Generals. I was playing a low-ranking Confederate aide-de-camp to General Stonewall Jackson and felt small amid the scale of the production. They put him on a horse that morning — grey coat, grey beard, grey sky — and he seemed to have stepped out of the earth itself; he was Lee, and he was Duvall.

I worried not about him but about finding the truth in the scene. We worked the whole day in that mud, and when it ended I retreated to my tiny trailer. There was a knock. Bobby’s assistant invited me to dinner. Seated across from him, he looked at me and said, "You’re a nice actor.

You didn’t push the emotion." Those few words gave me permission — to trust stillness, restraint and myself — and began a friendship that shaped the rest of my life. He saw my drifting career and told me I should write, drawing on his own work with The Apostle.

United States, Maryland

robert duvall, gods, generals, stonewall jackson, confederate aide, maryland, the apostle, friendship, acting, restraint