Two stunning performers have left the stage: Robert Duvall and Jesse Jackson.

The two men were so very different in so many different ways — one a conservative white, born into an admiral’s family in San Diego; the other a liberal Black, spurned by birth father and stepfather in the segregated South — yet both came to immerse themselves completely in their respective roles, impatient with and often heedless of direction.

My favorite version of Duvall was Mac Sledge, the washed-up, alcoholic country singer-songwriter in the 1983 film “Tender Mercies.” He looked like post-Muskogee Merle Haggard and sounded like — well, like Robert Duvall if he’d gone outlaw with Willie and Waylon, because he sang the damn’ songs, after test-driving his pipes with a country band and motoring around East Texas “looking for accents,” according to The New York Times.

But Duvall likewise was top-notch — or maybe top gun — in “The Great Santini,” a 1979 movie based on the book of the same name by Pat Conroy. The titular character he portrayed, Marine fighter pilot Lt. Col. Wilbur “Bull” Meecham, reminded me very much of a certain Southern-fried Air Force colonel who flew C-47s out of New Guinea during World War II.

Duvall’s favorite role was that of Augustus McCrae, a crusty old ex-Texas Ranger in the 1989 TV miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” based on the Larry McMurtry novel … a revelation that weirded me right the hell out because that book is on my nightstand right now, as I’m between books I haven’t already read a few hundred times. Gus is right up there as characters go, and Duvall knew it.

“Let the English play Hamlet and King Lear,” he told interviewers, “and I will play Augustus McCrae, a great character in literature.”

Jackson had the misfortune of being the understudy to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and after King’s assassination he spent the rest of his life auditioning for that elusive starring role. Some in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference thought him a spotlight hog, and some outside the SCLC found him easy to caricature, especially the white folks who ran the big casino — though plenty of them stopped laughing after he turned in strong performances as a presidential candidate in 1984 and ’88.

He lost the nominations to Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, who went on to get beaten like rented mules by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Jackson gave up tilting at that particular windmill.

Jackson continued trying to remind America that there were choices other than wrong right, hard right, and centrist, though as The Times notes, “for all his rhetorical thunder the Democrats never fully embraced his vision of an unashamedly liberal party based not on the white middle class but rather on his coalition of poor and working-class people of all colors.”

More’s the pity.

I don’t remember who I voted for in 1984. I was in a union then, and it’s possible that I pulled the lever for the old commie Gus Hall, because after brief flirtations with the Socialist Workers Party, the October League and the Communist Party (M-L) I occasionally enjoyed being a red pain in the ass. And no way was I gonna vote for a Hollywood cowboy who wasn’t Robert Duvall.

Four years later I was all about Gary Hart, until he self-destructed, and then I caucused for Jackson, for all the good it did him. His people charged that Colorado slow-walked its count to give Dukakis a boost going into the Wisconsin primary, but in the end, Jackson lost the caucus and the nomination to Dukakis.

Later that year at the behest of political pals I worked one event for the Democratic candidate. The people his campaign sent to Denver proved to be outlandish assholes, so much so that I didn’t bother to vote come November. It seemed pointless, another dry well in a decades-long drought. Barack Obama was light-years away.

But Jackson didn’t give up. And neither did Duvall. Both continued to find roles to play, and both helped make our lives worth the price of admission. Peace to them, their families, fans, and friends.