Robert Duvall names the best performance of his career
As anyone would expect from an actor who made their screen debut in the 1950s and continues going strong into their 90s, Robert Duvall has plenty of candidates to choose from when it comes to naming the best performance of his entire career.
The veteran won an Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ in 1983 drama Tender Mercies and accrued six more nominations, while he’s also been the recipient of a Bafta, two Primetime Emmys, and four Golden Globes. He’s worked with some of the most iconic figures in Hollywood on either side of the camera, and he’s been in several movies that rank among the greatest ever made.
From Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, its seminal sequel, and Apocalypse Now to Gregory Peck’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, and John Wayne’s True Grit via George Lucas’ THX 1138, Clint Eastwood’s Joe Kidd, and Sidney Lumet’s Network, Duvall’s filmography is hardly lacking in essentials.
He’s racked up almost 150 credits over the course of seven decades and change, giving plenty of unforgettable turns along the way. And yet, for somebody who became so deeply entrenched in the ‘New Hollywood’ movement and encountered almost all of its biggest and most important players at one stage or another, Duvall didn’t even think he was at his best on the big screen.
Instead, he opted for a miniseries that aired in four parts in February 1989, which scooped him one of those aforementioned Golden Globes. An epic western where he was backed by a stacked supporting cast that numbered Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane, Chris Cooper, Steve Buscemi, and more, there was only one answer when Talk Cinema pressed Duvall for his finest moment.
“There are a number,” he offered while ruminating on which performance deserved the top spot. “But Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove was my favourite because you had eight hours to develop it.” It may not be his most famous outing, but if it’s good enough for Duvall, then it’s impossible to argue with his selection.
Based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, Duvall’s McCrae and Jones’ Woodrow Call are a pair of famed – and retired – Texas Rangers who now run a stable in the titular town. The duo soon find themselves being drawn into a much-needed adventure when they join the other residents of Lonesome Dove on an arduous and perilous cattle drive from their home state to Montana.
Prestige TV at a time when the term was a decade away from even existing, the chance to dedicate eight hours of storytelling to a single character was an opportunity Duvall found too good to pass up, and the end result was not only one of the best performances he’d ever given but the one he’d remember as his greatest.
