Robert Duvall’s raucous previous with friends Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman: How the Hollywood trio bonded over their ardour for appearing and loved a prank-filled time scrimping by in New York

It was announced on Monday that Hollywood icon Robert Duvall had died at the age of 95 after passing away ‘peacefully’ at his home. 

During his career the star was best known for playing Tom Hagen, the consigliere and lawyer for the Corleone family, opposite Al Pacino and Marlon Brando in The Godfather films.

But before he hit the big time, Robert was, like most actors, struggling to get by as he moved from job to job to pay the bills. 

But Robert wasn’t alone on his quest for stardom, in fact, he made great friends with fellow Hollywood stars Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. 

Dustin told Variety in 2004: ‘If we had been at a party with a bunch of unemployed actors and somebody had said, “See those three? They’re going to be Hollywood stars,” the whole place would have erupted, and we would have been part of the laughter.’

Yet despite years of rejections, the trio soldiered on. Dustin explained that they didn’t want to ‘sell out’, instead they supported each other to believe in ‘what could be’. 

Living in New York in the 1950s and 60s, the threesome came to find each other by chance. 

While Gene and Dustin met at the Pasadena Playhouse in California in 1957, the pair became immediate friends after Gene was drawn to Dustin and the pair decided they ‘detested everyone else’. 

Disagreeing with the teacher’s approach to acting, Gene flunked the semester with the lowest grade ever given and was dismissed.

Reminiscing on how they met last year, Dustin told Deadline: ‘I met Gene in acting school, at the Pasadena Playhouse, when he was 27 and I was 19.

‘We used to play congas together on the roof, trying to be like our hero Marlon Brando.

‘And Gene was like Brando, in that he brought something unprecedented to our craft, something people didn’t immediately understand as genius.’

‘He was expelled from our school after three months for “not having talent.”‘ the Tootsie actor said, adding, ‘It was the first time they ever did that.’

Determined for his dreams not to be dashed he headed to New York with his then-wife Faye Maltese. 

It was in New York that he bagged himself an unpaid internship in summer stick at a theatre in Long Island. 

Working on a two-week production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, as if fate would have it there was one uncast role – Marco. 

Gene filled the role and it was here he met Robert, who just so happened to be playing the lead in the play. 

Linking the threesome together, in 1958 Dustin arrived in New York with no more than $50 to his name as he bunked in with Gene and his wife. 

‘I slept on his floor because he had this small bedroom … he had this little teeny bit larger room where there was the stove with a board over it where you would use to dry dishes,’ Dustin previously explained to IGN.

‘Next to the stove was a tub which was also the sink and it had a board over it. So, I would have to take a bath while they were making breakfast, and there was also a toilet next to the bath.

‘All he’s thinking about is that when I had to have my morning bathroom, I didn’t care whether they were making eggs or not. He’s held that against me for forty years.’ 

After three weeks living in cramped conditions, Gene moved Dustin into an apartment with Robert in a sixth-floor, three-bedroom walk-up apartment at 109th Street and Broadway. 

It was at this point that the group’s adventures began as they each embarked on trying to launch themselves into acting. 

Speaking to Variety back in 2013, Gene described the period as having a certain kind of freedom and they just wanted to experience things and have a good time. 

They weren’t necessarily chasing success, they just wanted to try acting and see if it worked. 

Recalling parties at Gene and Faye’s apartment, Robert said: ‘Yeah those were good years, not knowing what the future was about. All these friends. Very important. Dreaming. That was fun.’

He described one night when after dinner they all lay on the floor, went to sleep and then woke up later for dessert. 

Meanwhile Robert described his apartment as a youth hostel for actors and opera singers who would constantly filter through the place, staying for a few nights or even weeks on the sofas. 

There was constant music in the air as musicians practiced, with Dustin playing the piano and records of Broadway musicals playing. 

During parties with pizzas and candles in Chianti bottles the actors would recreate certain skits and improvised routines to entertain each other. 

Constant pranksters, one of their friends Elliot Gould recalled that the first time he met Robert and Dustin they came round and rang the buzzer. 

Then upon looking out of the peephole of his door, Elliot saw the pair were stood with their pants down, mooning him from the hallway. 

Later during his career on the set of The Godfather, Robert mooned Brando during a take with him later reflecting: ‘Hey, you have fun. It’s harmless.’

‘Bobby maybe was the most outrageous, uncensored,’ said Dustin to Variety, ‘Do anything on impulse.’

Throughout their time together the threesome got up to many pranks and tricks, while also navigating relationships. 

Dustin admitted that he and Robert were obsessed with sex and found their acting gave them a leg up when it came to luck with the ladies. 

During their acting classes they would always look forward to the love scenes with the women in their classes, and sought them out especially. 

After living with a succession of girls and friends, in the early 60s Dustin and Robert got an apartment together on West 22nd Street. 

And it seems there were no boundaries between the best friends. 

Dustin recalled how if he had a girl over, and they were showering together the next morning, Robert would take his clothes off and hop into the shower too to introduce himself to the lady in question. 

Another time Robert recalled that he came down to find a naked woman stood on the table while Dustin was stood pretending to be a painter. 

Later in 1963, Dustin met his first wife Anne Byrne after his friend Maurice Stern took a fancy to her. 

After a failed week of dating her, Dustin began seeing Anne and the pair fell in love, but she shortly had to return to her home in Philadelphia.

Dustin told Robert at the time that he would marry her and the two men bet $100 on it.

Later in 1969, Dustin and Anne wed, but Dustin insisted that Robert never paid him his money. 

Prior to finding fame, the threesome were not living lavishly, getting by on their cheap rents of $10 or $20 a month. 

The friends recalled how they would just help out whoever was ‘most broke’ at the time as they hopped from job to job.  

While Dustin paid the bills as a typist for the Yellow Pages, Gene worked as a relief man at Whelan drugstore, a shoe salesman and a doorman for a building in Times Square. 

Meanwhile Robert moved boxes at a department store and delivered messages for a dollar an hour. 

During another job as a waiter in a French restaurant, Dustin used the opportunity to perfect his French accent, and if he got caught out by somebody speaking to him in French he would simply say he needed to practice his English and switch back. 

Later during a job at Macy’s toy department, Gene brought his son Christopher to visit when he was 18 months old. 

Deciding to play a prank on the Christmas shoppers, the pair placed Christopher on the counter and Dustin tried to sell him to a woman as a walking, talking doll, with real hair for $16.95. 

When the woman agreed, she then shrieked when upon touching him she realised he was in fact real. 

Eventually each of the three got their big break. 

In 1962 Gene was the only candidate who made everyone laugh when auditioning for Any Wednesday and he got the part. 

This led to his film role in Lilith and then he was cast in Bonnie and Clyde, the role that won him an Oscar nomination. 

Meanwhile in 1955 playwright Horton Foote saw Robert in a Neighborhood Playhouse production and in a TV show a few years later. 

He then suggested him to play Boo Radley in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird which became his breakthrough role. 

For Dustin he spent years teaching, acting and working as a stage manager before he got his break in 1964. 

After starring in a theatre production called Waiting For Godot with Robert, their performance was spotted by theatre director Ulu Grosbard and this sparked his successful theatre career. 

After winning an Obie Award for The Journey of the Fifth Horse, he was later called for a screen test for The Graduate. 

However it was Gene who was originally meant to star in The Graduate as Mr Robinson, but he was fired.  

‘I got fired, I think, because I just didn’t fulfill the director’s and the writer’s idea of what the part should’ve been,’ the actor said.

‘In rehearsals, I do a lot of searching around, I try not to perform and I really feel confident in what I’m doing. I mean, you can go first day and perform and probably won’t go further than that.’

‘But the way that we were all trained in the Fifties and Sixties, you needed to keep searching and so, I was doing that, and they decided that I was just taking too much time.’

Gene and Dustin later shared the screen together in 2003’s Runaway Jury with Hoffman starring as an attorney suing a gun manufacturer while Hackman played a corrupt jury consultant. 

Tragically, the trio have now been torn apart. 

In February 2025, Gene passed away at his home from heart disease. 

His wife, Betsy Arakawa had died a week prior from hantavirus, a rare but severe respiratory illness spread through exposure, typically inhalation, to rodent droppings. 

While Robert passed away ‘peacefully’ at his home in Middleburg, Virginia, on Sunday, his publicist announced this week.