Feature image: Dave Kunkel, Steve Lang, Robert Duvall. “Dave Kunkel, Steve Lang, Robert Duvall” by Wicklein Group is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Robert Duvall died February 15, 2026, at his home in Middleburg, Virginia, at 95 it was announced February 16. In Tender Mercies, a 1983 American drama film set in Texas, Robert Duvall played washed-up country singer Mac Sledge in a performance that won that year’s Academy Award for Best Actor. In this scene, Duvall’s friend, Wilford Brimley, played Harry, Mac’s former manager, and Tess Harper played a widow named Rosa Lee who develops feelings for Mac. Coming off a bitter break up with his wife Dixie Lee, a superstar country singer, who won’t let her ex-alcoholic husband near herself or their grown daughter, Mac, a once legendary country music star in his own right, lives and works quietly at a gas station operated by Rosa Lee who lives with her young son. As Mac tries to rebuild both his career and life on the Texas badlands, he finds he has keener, if less flashy, success with the latter. Nominated for 5 Academy Awards, Tender Mercies also won Oscar for Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen (Horton Foote). In his 60-year film career, Duvall made scores of films, receiving seven Academy Award nominations in the process. Duvall also received four Golden Globe Awards. From his film debut in 1962 as Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, Duvall appeared in some of the most iconic feature films of his era and in iconic roles both on screen and behind the camera as producer, writer and director. Notable film titles include: True Grit (1969), M*A*S*H (1970), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Great Santini (1979), Tender Mercies (1983), The Natural (1984), The Apostle (1997), Open Range (2003), and Wild Horses (2015). At 91 years old, Duvall’s final film, The Pale Blue Eye, was released 60 years after his first, in 2022.