David Mamet: Robert Duvall Was the Best Actor of His Generation
Actor and film director Robert Duvall stands at the intersection of 8th Avenue and 44th Street, New York, July 1981. (Chuck Fishman via Getty Images)
The playwright reflects on the late, legendary lead actor of his ‘American Buffalo.’
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Sixty years ago I was a student at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Sanford Meisner, the head of the school, was, with Lee Strasberg, the co-doyen of something that may have been called The Method.
Perennially exasperated with our student efforts, he suggested we actually go and learn something. How? By watching, in his words, the only actor worthy of the name. It was Robert Duvall. He was playing in Tomorrow, a short play by Horton Foote, downtown at HB Studio. In his performance, there was no embellishment, no interpretation, no “character”; only a man onstage, with a simple objective—telling the truth.
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