The movie world lost one of its all-time greats when actor and filmmaker Robert Duvall passed away on February 15, 2026 at the age of 95. Duvall leaves behind a truly monumental body of work, including the following ten titles that are all currently available on home video. (You can find them available on digital or streaming as well, if that’s your preferred movie consumption method.) Read more about them — and get links where to purchase them — below.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
What a debut. On the recommendation of screenwriter Horton Foote, Duvall — then a young actor mostly working in theater — landed the role of Boo Radley in the movie version of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The film went on to become one of the most beloved movies of the early 1960s, and Foote and Duvall worked together again on Tender Mercies.
The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974)
Francis Ford Coppola first worked with Duvall in his 1969 film The Rain People; when Coppola cast The Godfather, he thought of Duvall for the role of Tom Hagen, the Corleone family lawyer. Duvall wound up one of three Godfather co-stars to get nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the film along with James Caan and Al Pacino. All three ultimately lost to Joel Grey in Cabaret. But The Godfather remains one of the greatest films in Hollywood history, and Duvall reprised his role in The Godfather Part II, so it worked out okay, all things considered.
Network (1976)
Two years after The Godfather Part II, Duvall played another essential supporting role in a ’70s classic. In Network, he’s UBS vice president Frank Hackett, who works with Faye Dunaway’s character to exploit their news anchor’s (Peter Finch) sudden popularity after he has a mental breakdown on the air and threatens to kill himself. As in so many of his great movies of this period, Duvall is not the star, or the flashiest performer. But he brought a gritty authenticity to Network with his tough, understated work.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
In Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Duvall — as the merciless (but also surf-loving) Lt. Kilgore — gave a speech that is etched into pop culture history: “Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours … the smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill. Smelled like… victory.”
Tender Mercies (1983)
Duvall finally won his Academy Award for this Horton Foote-scripted tale about a drunken country singer who gets his life back on track with the help of a kind woman and her son. The shoot was a fraught one — Duvall and director Bruce Beresford supposedly fought over the direction of the character and the film — but the results were, like so many Duvall performances, quietly powerful.
The Natural (1984)
This baseball film is famed for its bombastic finale featuring Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs (which, of course, is strikingly different from the novel it is based on). Duvall plays a famous sports writer who gets mixed up with the young Roy Hobbs and then recognizes him years later when Roy shows up playing for the New York Knights. If you can hear the phrase The Natural, and not start humming the music from that final home run, you are a better person than me.
The Paper (1994)
The Paper might be the least well-known and least-seen movie Ron Howard directed in the ’90s. (His bigger hits of the period include Backdraft, Apollo 13, and Ransom.) It might also be his best work of the decade, a lively ensemble piece about the inner-workings of a big-city newspaper. Michael Keaton stars as the overworked editor of a New York City tabloid, whose obsession with a story threatens to derail his career and his marriage; Duvall plays the paper’s editor-in-chief. Yet again Duvall does some of his best work blending into a large and talented ensemble — one that in this case also includes Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, and the late Catherine O’Hara.
The Apostle (1997)
Duvall directed four films over the course of his Hollywood career; the most famous was this 1997 Oscar nominee, which Duvall helmed, wrote, and starred in as Sonny Dewey, a Pentecostal preacher who commits a terrible crime and then attempts to create a new life for himself as “The Apostle E.F.” of a new congregation. Duvall wanted to make the movie for years; when he couldn’t find someone else to produce it, he decided to independently finance it himself. His faith was rewarded with an arthouse hit and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
We Own the Night (2007)
One more strong supporting turn from Duvall for you: In James Gray’s We Own the Night, he plays a deputy chief of the NYPD and the father to the two leads, played by Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg. The latter is a cop; the former is a Brooklyn club manager with ties to the underworld. After drug dealers target the family, Phoenix’s character agrees to become an informant, with even more violent results.
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