CLEMSON FOOTBALL

Legendary actor Robert Duvall describes
Robert Duvall (left) and Swinney in Swinney's office last Saturday (Photo courtesy of Luciana Duvall).

Legendary actor Robert Duvall describes "memorable" time at Clemson with Dabo Swinney


by - Senior Writer -

Legendary actor Robert Duvall and his wife Luciana spent last weekend in Clemson, taking in the sights and sounds of a football gameday and spending time with head coach Dabo Swinney. Duvall, whose career spans more than seven decades, had one word to describe his trip to Tigertown.

Memorable.

Duvall is the recipient of an Academy Award, four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Duvall has starred in numerous films and television series, including The Twilight Zone (1963), The Outer Limits (1964), The F.B.I. (1966), Bullitt (1968), True Grit (1969), Joe Kidd (1972), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Conversation (1974), Network (1976), Apocalypse Now (1979), The Great Santini (1979), Tender Mercies (1983, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor), The Natural (1984), Colors (1988), Lonesome Dove (1989), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Days of Thunder (1990), Rambling Rose (1991), Falling Down (1993), Secondhand Lions (2003), The Judge (2014), and Widows (2018).

He is also a football fan, and when he appeared in Clemson last week for the regular-season home finale against Wake Forest, we wrote a story chronicling his arrival. We were told that Swinney had a tie to Duvall’s foundation and that's how it came about, but that turned out to not be the case, and when his wife reached out to set the record straight, we asked for a few minutes to find out how Duvall became a Clemson fan.

He graciously agreed and said that he noticed the Tigers during the 2015 National Championship Game loss to Alabama in Phoenix.

“A few years ago when they first played Alabama with Deshaun Watson and they lost that game, I was rooting for him because I kind of followed him,” Duvall told TigerNet. “And then the next time they played, Watson ran for a touchdown, and they beat them and they've beaten Alabama two out of three times that they played in the national championship and I’ve followed them all the way through. I just adhere to the team. I like the team and Dabo Swinney's an extremely unique guy. I have great respect for him, in many things, but especially after he ran across the field in Syracuse and down into the locker room and congratulated them on having beaten him.”

A happy birthday message to Duvall from Swinney connected the two.

“And then after that came a happy birthday message last year. I got a happy birthday message from Dabo Swinney as a surprise. It was a great surprise,” Duvall said. “And I wrote back, ‘I'm a fan of yours, too. You've beaten Alabama two out of three times and keep it up.’ That's what I said, keep it up. He said, ‘I'll put that in the locker room, that'll help us.’ And when I sat down and talked with him down there, it was like, how can I put it? The immediacy of talking with the guy. I've talked with a lot of people.

“I mean, I've talked with Bill Clinton, with George Bush and General (Colin) Powell and Marlon Brando, and way back with other Presidents and all kinds of people. And I felt more of an immediacy right away talking with Dabo Swinney. Maybe we come from different worlds and that's what made it work. We had a wonderful half hour or less conversation before he went out to work with the troops the day before the big game.”

Duvall said he spent time on campus and loved what he saw.

“It's amazing. It's a wonderful school, a land-grant school, and right in the middle of this campus is a stadium of 80,000 people,” he said. “And he was working with them the day before the game and lo and behold, I'm sitting there watching, he sent all the players over to shake my hand. What an outstanding gesture that he did, you know? So, it was a great, great honor to be there and I just have the greatest respect for him as a coach. And I think they're on the way up again next year.”

Duvall said he enjoyed the experience of being in the town of Clemson and on campus for the game.

“Well, I like it very much. I was treated with wonderful warmth and respect, me and my wife,” Duvall said. “It was just terrific, and I sat with Mama Swinney (Carol McIntosh, Dabo's mother) up in the box and watched the game from way up and everybody was just so lovely and so warm and accepting. It was just a wonderful two days, very special.”

He then had one word to describe the entire experience, and it was delivered as only Robert Duvall can deliver a line.

“Memorable. As soon as something happens, it becomes a memory, but this memory will live on and hopefully, we'll come back again, perhaps,” Duvall said. “I wanted to meet Dabo Swinney. I wanted to meet that gentleman and it was a wonderful time meeting him. He's a very special guy and a very special coach. He's a good leader of men.”

Of course, any conversation with one of the world’s most versatile actors turns to his body of work, and he said that his career has not slowed down as he and his wife travel around the country when they aren’t home at their horse ranch in Virginia.

“In the beginning of the season, right after you'd lost to Georgia, close, 10-3, I got what you could call the Cowboy Oscar (the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Lifetime Achievement Award). John Wayne's son (Patrick Wayne) was there,” Duvall said. “And that was a great two or three days, too. And then from there, I went on to Philadelphia to work with Adam Sandler. So, I’ve got a few left in me, you know.”

He said playing former Texas Ranger Augustus “Gus” McCrae in Lonesome Dove, one of his most iconic roles, is also one of his favorites.

“I loved doing that. I walked into Lonesome Dove one day and said, ‘Boys, we’re making the Godfather of Westerns.' He then added that the chemistry of the all-star cast made the miniseries work," Duvall said. “It's just one of those things that just happened. We just went and did it, in 16 weeks. And they had offered my part to somebody else, but somebody I knew really well said, no, you have to play Augustus McCrae. So, I said to my agent, if you can talk the other actor out of doing Augustus McCrae, I'll be in it. But you have to get him to switch. So, he called back an hour later and said that actor cannot be in a saddle for 16 weeks, he has a bad back. I said, okay, go after Augustus McCrae.

“If someone that close to me hadn't had said that to me, I wouldn't have dug in. They made me an honorary Texas Ranger a few years ago. And a woman came up after the ceremony and said, ‘Mr. Duvall, we watch Lonesome Dove as a family at least once a year together and I would not allow my daughter's fiancé to marry into the family until she had seen Lonesome Dove.”

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