Robert Duvall was a distinguished and prolific screen actor who lent a brooding intensity and grizzled authority to seven decades of American film-making.
Nominated for Academy Awards on seven occasions, he won best actor for his role as a troubled country singer in 1983's Tender Mercies.
His many other roles included a mafia consigliere in The Godfather, a bombastic army officer in Apocalypse Now, and a Texas Ranger-turned-cattle driver in Lonesome Dove.
More character actor than leading man, he could be relied upon to inject a feisty, fiery machismo and a cantankerous contrariness into the most mainstream Hollywood offering.
Born Robert Selden Duvall in January 1931 in San Diego, California, Duvall was a self-proclaimed "navy brat" due to his father's life-long career in the United States Navy.
