SONNY BUNCH: Robert Duvall, R.I.P.

It’s impossible to single out a lone defining performance by Duvall, who died Monday at 95 in his Middleburg, Virginia, home. He was in so many of the greatest films of all time that one loses track trying to count them. Where do you start? With To Kill a Mockingbird, I suppose, though his turn as Boo Radley doesn’t really give you a sense of what was to come. He’s one of those actors who had to age ever so slightly, who had to grow into that weathered face and earn that wry smile that suggested so much hidden knowledge.

That smile serves him well in the first two Godfather films, as consigliere to Don Corleone. The first time you see the movie you don’t know what it means when he grins at the mogul’s seamless transition of ethnic slurs, from guinea goombah to his “kraut-mick friend,” but you know it can’t be good. Duvall was lucky enough to have fallen in with that whole crew a decade into his career—Coppola, Lucas, and the other filmmakers who would change the world as we know it—so you have to mention The Conversation and THX 1138 and, of course, Apocalypse Now. Has there ever been a more quotable character with less screen time than Lt. Col. Kilgore? “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”; “Charlie don’t surf”; “Bomb them into the Stone Age, son.” He’s in the movie for maybe ten minutes and they’re all unforgettable, which is probably why he got his second Best Supporting Actor nomination for the role.

And then there’s Network, a movie I spent a lot of time with last year in the midst of all the drama surrounding CBS News and governmental pressures exerted on the broadcast networks and film studios alike. Duvall’s Frank Hackett is a vision of the future, the amoral corporate hatchet man whose only worry is getting the spreadsheet numbers up a few percentage points to make the shareholders happy at the annual meeting. If that means degrading the news division, fine. If it means killing the news division’s lead anchor, well, who is to say what’s right and wrong in this crazy world of ours? Of all the actors in that film—and there are a number of all-time greats, including Faye Dunaway and William Holden—I’ve always felt as though Duvall adapted best to the overlapping, rhythmic dialogue deployed by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky in this film.

Also in 1976, Duvall played the Nazi colonel who set in motion the plan to kidnap Winston Churchill in The Eagle Has Landed, easily holding his own screen next to Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Anthony Quayle and Donald Pleasence.

He roomed with two fellow struggling actors in the 50s–Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman.Three wildly different types. What they had in common was an inability to be false. And they all won Oscars when, in 1960, the idea any of them could be leading men would have seemed insane.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 16, 2026

UPDATE:

We are entering a spiral now where we are going to start losing the last great generation of movie stars in bunches, now. It’s sad and unfortunate… all the more so because we have not replaced them.

— George MF Washington (@GMFWashington) February 17, 2026

That clock’s been ticking for a decade now on rock stars, just as it was 50 years ago for big band-era stars.