Like his friend from the 1950s Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall had to wait for the culture to come around to men who had his ordinary-guy looks, and that wasn't until he was entering middle age.

The start of a new year signals the release of a fresh batch of time-tested characters into the public domain. 2025 freed the first-ever iteration of Mickey Mouse, Tintin, and Popeye from copyright protection, joined by 'The Skeleton Dance' from Disney's Silly Symphonies, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.