Hollywood icon Robert Duvall, the Oscar-winning actor whose career defined American cinema for more than six decades, has died at age 95, his wife Luciana Duvall announced. He passed away peacefully at his home in Middleburg, Virginia on February 15, according to statements shared publicly by his family.

Duvall's career spanned seven decades and included some of the most revered performances in film history. Born January 5, 1931 in San Diego, California, Robert Selden Duvall first appeared onscreen in the 1962 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird before going on to iconic roles that shaped modern Hollywood.

He became a household name in the 1970s with unforgettable turns as Tom Hagen in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, earning critical acclaim for his calm, layered style and quiet intensity. Duvall's second major role in this era came as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, delivering one of cinema's most quoted lines and cementing his reputation as a versatile force in film.

In 1983 Duvall won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his deeply human portrayal of Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies, a role that showcased his commitment to character and story above all else. Across his career he received seven Oscar nominations, including for The Great Santini and The Apostle, the latter of which he also wrote and directed.

His work extended beyond film into television and theater, with notable performances in acclaimed projects such as the miniseries Lonesome Dove and the HBO film Stalin, earning him additional Golden Globe and Emmy recognition.

In the statement shared on social media, Luciana Duvall described her husband as "one of the greatest actors of our time," reflecting on their life together as both a creative partnership and deep personal bond. She confirmed his passing was peaceful, surrounded by love and comfort at home.

Duvall is survived by his wife, who has asked for privacy as the family grieves and as tributes from around the world pour in. His enduring legacy remains in the body of work he leaves behind, spanning crime sagas, war epics, intimate dramas and Westerns, that have inspired generations of actors and filmmakers.

Robert Duvall, the Oscar winning actor whose filmography helped define modern American cinema, is being remembered not only for roles in classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, but also for a second life passion that took him far from Hollywood soundstages and deep into the late night tango clubs of Buenos Aires.

Duvall died Sunday night, Feb. 15, 2026, at his home in Middleburg, Virginia, according to a statement from his representative. He was 95.

For years, tango was more than a hobby for Duvall. It was a discipline, a social world, and eventually a love story tied directly to Argentina. In a 2011 Esquire piece, he distilled the dance with a line tango dancers often repeat in their own way: "When you dance tango fast, you have to think slow."

His Argentina connection became inseparable from Luciana Pedraza, the Argentine woman who later became his wife. Their origin story reads like a film scene, except it is one Duvall himself loved to tell. In that same Esquire feature, he said he went to a bakery because a flower shop was closed, and that twist of timing led to meeting Pedraza in Argentina. CBS News, in a 2004 report centered on his tango obsession, also described the encounter outside a Buenos Aires bakery, quoting Pedraza recalling how she approached him and invited him to a tango shop opening.

By the early 2000s, Duvall did what he often did with his passions: he turned them into a project. He wrote, directed and starred in Assassination Tango, a thriller that plants an aging professional killer in Buenos Aires and lets the city's tango culture work on him, slowly, seductively, and then completely. The Austin Chronicle captured the premise bluntly, describing how the character becomes enchanted with tango while on assignment in Buenos Aires, and how the film braids together Duvall's love of the dance, the city, and Pedraza, who appears opposite him.

The movie mattered to tango fans because it treated the dance less like an exotic flourish and more like a living language with rules, etiquette, and a heartbeat that starts with the walk. That approach tracks with the way Duvall talked about tango publicly, as something demanding enough to humble an actor known for playing commanders, cowboys, and men who never blink.

His tango life was not limited to Argentina, either. A Times obituary noted that after he and Pedraza married in 2005, they kept the ritual going at home, with "daily tango sessions in a converted barn" on Duvall's Virginia farm, alongside another shared obsession, horses. In other words, tango did not stay in Buenos Aires as a vacation romance. It became part of his domestic routine.

Argentina, for Duvall, also represented a kind of creative reset. He returned again and again, not as a celebrity collecting experiences, but as someone chasing mastery in a culture that does not care who you are once you step onto the floor. CBS News described him spending nights in Buenos Aires tango clubs, calling it an "obsession," and framing the trips around dancing rather than nightlife in the usual sense.

In the hours after his death was reported, tributes focused on the immensity of his screen work, but the tango thread offers a different way to understand Duvall's longevity as an artist. Acting rewarded his instincts. Tango demanded his attention. Argentina gave him a place where he was not just Robert Duvall, legend, but simply another man learning how to listen, lead, and move in time.

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