Robert Duvall Gave His Characters—and Us—Grace

Some actors melt into their roles, but Robert Duvall, who died on Feb. 15 at age 95, did not. He was too much of a presence: from the silky-smooth fixer Tom Hagen in the first two Godfather movies to Lt. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now and Sonny in The Apostle, Duvall vested characters with a livewire crackle tied to his physicality.

His eyes could be steely or dance with light; the characters he specialized in weren’t always immediately likable, but he seduced us into believing in them and opened us to human complexities. Born in San Diego in 1931, he spent much of the 1960s in small roles on television and made his film debut as the misunderstood recluse Boo Radley in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

TV kept him working—Route 66, The Fugitive, Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea—while the 1970s became his decade. He played memorable jerks like Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H and Frank Hackett in Network; even Tom Hagen’s indefensible acts felt chillingly real, and Kilgore’s gruff complexity could not be reduced to a single line.

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