Oscar-winning actor Robert Duvall whose screen career spanned six decades, has died.
He was 95.
Duvall was best known for “The Godfather,“ “Apocalypse Now” and many other tough-guy roles, per CNN.
He died “peacefully” at his home in Middleburg, Virginia, on Sunday, according to a statement sent by his public relations agency on behalf of his wife, Luciana.
Duvall played the Corleone family consigliere, or key adviser, in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.” This earned his the first of his seven Academy Award nominations for the 1972 film. He reprised the role two years later in “The Godfather Part II.”
He was born in San Diego, California, the son of his a career naval officer. Duvall played a wide variety of roles, from cowboys to military men.
The actor appeared in a number of plays before being cast in the film version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in the small but pivotal of Arthur “Boo” Radley in 1962.
He played the bad guy opposite John Wayne in Wayne’s lone Oscar-winning performance, “True Grit”; the part of Major Frank Burns in the Robert Altman movie “M*A*S*H”; and the lead in “Star Wars” director George Lucas’ dystopian 1971 sci-fi directing debut, “THX 1138,” in which Duvall sported shaved heads.
The actor worked constantly thereafter, playing a network executive in the satire “Network,” and then on television in the blockbuster TV miniseries “Lonesome Dove.”
Duvall won a lead acting Oscar for portraying a country singer in the 1983 movie “Tender Mercies,” where he did his own singing.
He also earned nominations as a marine at odds with his family in “The Great Santini,” and as Lt. Col. Kilgore in the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now,” which featured him delivering the oft-quoted line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
He was married four times, with his last marriage was to Argentinian actress-director Luciana Pedraza, who was 41 years younger.
