Steve McQueen on working with Robert Duvall: ‘He was the rock. He brought gravity’

2026-02-17 - 16:43

Duvall was cast as politician Tom Mulligan in McQueen’s 2018 thriller Widows: ‘He was nervous. I was gobsmacked,’ the director recalls. ‘That’s a sign of a great artist’ He must have been 88 or 89 when he did Widows. He came on the set – this icon – and we got talking, about London. He started telling me about Michael Caine and all these cockney phrases that Michael must have told him. We’re getting on all right – and then all of a sudden, he gets a bit annoyed. It got to a point where I didn’t really understand what was going on, as we’d been having a good time. It turned out he was nervous. He was as nervous as Cynthia Erivo was, whose first ever film role it was. And I was gobsmacked – he’s been doing this for I don’t know how long, back to the 1960s, and then I realised that, for him, it’s brand new every time. That’s a sign of a great artist: he doesn’t rely on what he’s done before he’s going into it. He was a veteran, a legend, and yet he was nervous. And then, you know, we got into the groove and then it was fine. It’s just like what I imagine a football player goes through: you’re thinking about the match, getting wound up, and once you’re on the field, well, it’s, let’s get on with it. And that was Robert. Once the engines were warmed up, he was away. Continue reading...