Jan 5, 1931

San Diego, California, USA

The Veteran actor and director Robert Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, California, the son of a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, Illinois), then served a two-year hitch in the army after graduating in 1953. He began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I. Bill in 1955, studying under Sanford Meisner along with Dustin Hoffman, with whom Duvall shared an apartme... ... (read more...) nt. Both were close to another struggling young actor named Gene Hackman. Meisner cast Duvall in the play "The Midnight Caller" by Horton Foote, a link that would prove critical to his career, as it was Foote who recommended Duvall to play the mentally disabled "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), his motion picture debut.

He was also memorable as the first "Maj. Frank Burns", creating the character in Altman's Korean War comedy MASH (1970). It was Francis Ford Coppola, casting The Godfather (1972), who reunited Duvall with Brando and Caan and provided him with his career breakthrough as mob lawyer "Tom Hagen". He received the first of his six Academy Award nominations for the role.
It was his appearance as "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in another Coppola picture, Apocalypse Now (1979), that solidified Duvall's reputation as a great actor. He won his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor in the world!