Duvall, Hackman, Hoffman: Pranks and Acting Bonding

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 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  and . 

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 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.

Dustin in The Graduate alongside Anne Bancroft in 1967