Robert Duvall’s career-long fascination with Ken Loach and ‘Kes’
Robert Duvall knows a thing or two about cinema. The legendary actor, who celebrated his 93rd birthday in January 2024, has one of the most impressive CVs you’re ever likely to come across. Considering his first film role was as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, Duvall’s career could have easily fallen off a cliff. Yet, it didn’t, as he went on to appear in the likes of Apocalypse Now, True Grit, M*A*S*H, Network, and The Godfather.
As well as starring in front of the camera, Duvall has also enjoyed successful stints behind it. He directed the 1997 film The Apostle, which won ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ at the Independent Spirit Awards. He was still directing as recently as 2015’s Wild Horses, a western in which he also starred. It didn’t get the best reviews, but the fact that he could still make a movie in his eighth decade is impressive enough.
Wild Horses took the novel approach of utilising both professional actors and novices, such as Duvall’s wife, Luciana. The star was inspired by one of his heroes, British director Ken Loach, who did exactly the same thing on his acclaimed 1969 drama Kes. The movie’s lead character, a troubled boy from a Yorkshire town who finds meaning after adopting a kestrel, was played by David ‘Dai’ Bradley, a 16-year-old who had never acted before. His performance was widely praised, as were Loach’s themes of working-class struggles and the film’s bleak yet realistic ending.
When speaking with The Guardian to promote Wild Horses, Duvall spoke of his love for Kes and how it affected him when he first saw it. “I came out of Kes years ago and said, ‘I know it’s not a documentary,’” he recalled. “‘I know it’s fiction, but how do you get that fine line?’ A first-time actor might have a purity, no bad habits, and he might put the professional actor on notice. What impressed me more than any other director of the time was what he did in that movie.”
Duvall took Loach’s approach to naturalistic acting and tried to incorporate it into his own work, as he told NoFilmSchool. “We didn’t rehearse that much,” he said of his Wild Horses cast. “Usually, when you have actors, the spontaneity can come quickly without having to worry about it or predetermine. You just do it. You just do it without talking about it, without intellectualising it too much, or philosophising. I call it ‘from ink to behaviour’. To go from ink to behaviour, see where that goes and let the process take you to the result rather than trying to ram the result home.”
In the Guardian interview, Duvall confirmed himself as an Anglophile when he mentioned another classic British performer as one of his favourites. “One of the greatest things I’ve ever seen on stage was Leonard Rossiter doing Arturo Ui in England years ago,” he confessed. Rossiter was a seasoned theatrical performer but made his name on TV in the 1970s with shows like Rising Damp and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. He also had small roles in 2001: A Space Odyssey and the film adaptation of Oliver!.
Duvall hasn’t appeared in a movie since 2022, but the two he made that year were both pretty big. He appeared in The Pale Blue Eye alongside Christian Bale and played the owner of the San Francisco 76ers basketball team in the Adam Sandler sports drama Hustle.
