EXCLUSIVE: Robert Duvall Reveals How Hollywood Big-Wigs Brutally Knocked Back His 'Life-Changing' Preacher Flick 'The Apostle' – As He Opens Up About How It Rekindled His Faith
Robert Duvall has been frank about his struggles getting one of his favorite movies made.
Feb. 24 2025, Published 6:30 a.m. ET
When Hollywood star Robert Duvall made The Apostle, it changed his life forever, RadarOnline.com can reveal – but it almost never saw the light of day.
"For years, I wanted to make this film," said Duvall, who wrote and directed the movie himself.
He added in a frank chat about how it was a war to get it made it was a "labor of love" that started in 1962 when he "prepared to play a character from the rural South in an off-Broadway play."
Duvall made 'The Apostle' a reality despite heavy rejection.
For his research on The Apostle, he traveled to Hughes, Arkansas, where he slipped into a local Pentecostal church one Sunday.
Referring to how he grew up in a churchgoing U.S. Navy family during World War II, Duvall added: "I knew about the inner life of the Spirit, but I had never seen church like that.
"People could barely contain the joy of their faith. Their faces were alive with it, imbued. Folks were on their feet, singing praise and clapping, shouting to God. The air crackled with the Spirit."
The actor said it made him think to himself: "I knew the people in that church had a gift, a story to share. Somehow, someday, I would tell that story."
Eventually, he began penning the drama he "had wanted to write for many years – a story of a preacher."
He added he wanted to show a "good" but "flawed" man on screen as we are "all" imperct.
Duvall said about his character: "Called by God at the age of 12, he becomes a respected minister with a rousing gift for charismatic preaching. But his family is torn apart by marital infidelity."
The faith-filled energy of a small Arkansas church inspired Duvall to write 'The Apostle.'
Duvall also knew he would have to make the movie himself.
"Hollywood usually shows preachers as hucksters and hypocrites, and I was sick and tired of that," he said. "I wanted to show the joy and vitality I had seen with my own eyes and felt in my heart and in my life, the sheer, extraordinary excitement of faith."
He went on: "The story seemed to flow from me. I wrote everywhere, in airports and hotels, on set between scenes, even in meetings."
Producers dismissed Duvall’s script, so the 'Tender Mercies' star funded 'The Apostle' himself.
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But when he took his script to Hollywood producers, he was rebuffed with the same response: "Bob, religion is not a subject our audiences want to watch."
So the Tender Mercies Oscar winner footed the bill for the flick himself.
"I'm proud of the film," declared Duvall.
He now hopes those who see his labor of love "will be moved the way I was when I happened upon that small church in Hughes, Arkansas."
Duvall declared: "It was the greatest discovery I ever made."
