From the horse’s head in The Godfather to the smell of napalm in Apocalypse Now, no one does chilling menace like the 91-year-old Oscar-winner. With the release this month of his new film, we rate his greatest roles
Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95
Robert Duvall: vigorous and subtle actor who performed with passion and conviction
A pretty odd and atypical role for Duvall in which he was perhaps not well cast. He plays a Brit, Dr Watson, sidekick to Nicol Williamson’s legendary detective Sherlock Holmes in this non-canonical fan fiction tale (a genre that critic Gilbert Adair called “shlock Holmes”). Watson is convinced that Holmes is suffering cocaine-induced delusions (due to ingesting his “7% solution”), takes him to see Sigmund Freud – and they wind up solving a case.
A tiny, unsympathetic and perhaps uninteresting Duvall role in this breakthrough movie for writer-director-star Billy Bob Thornton, who plays Karl, a 40-year-old man with learning disabilities who has just been released from psychiatric hospital, having as a child killed his mother and her lover with the “sling blade” of the title. In a key scene, he confronts his glowering, near silent old dad (Duvall) with the abuse that traumatised him. Thornton doesn’t give Duvall much to do, perhaps suspecting he would get horribly upstaged.
