Lee Strasberg hasn't been given the credit he deserves Next to Charlie, it sort of launched me. I wanted to be there. Tap into Getty Images' global scale, data-driven insights, and network of more than 340,000 creators to create content exclusively for your brand. . After he finished, he said, Berghof got up there and started to put me down. The play opened January 17, 1968, and ran for 177 performances; it was staged in a double bill with Horovitz's It's Called the Sugar Plum, starring Clayburgh. One day, according to Pacino, she read him the riot act. You know Al? I nodded. He stopped drinking in 1977. A low table holds a sprawling Lego construction in progress. He assumes their identity so completely that he continues to live a role long after a play or movie is over. Once, when Pacino was playing Richard III in Boston, Jacqueline Kennedy came backstage to greet him. He is not a witty and articulate speaker. In the final movie, Pacino lip-synchs to Frank Sinatras version of the song; according to Mirren, the studio had to pay a huge sum for the rights, but it was worth it., Pacino sometimes develops his characters by observing others. At one point, Pacino, with a carnation and a floppy handkerchief in his jacket pocket, even pops up as Wilde himself. Yes, there are flaws, but in them are things youll remember., Pacino protects his talent by leaving it alone, which accounts for his vaunted moodiness. [59] He did allow his likeness to appear in the video game adaptation of 1983's Scarface, the quasi-sequel Scarface: The World is Yours. The film earned solid reviews. When they saw that scene, they kept me., Pacinos performance in The Godfather put him at the center of one of the great cinematic sagas of the century and on a first-name basis with the world. Pacino would open cupboards and doors, pretending to search for a hidden stash of booze. He got the shit kicked out of him by cops with helmets and big clubsYou little wop! Millions of dollars were gone, Sola said. I have to say, she was right., Sea of Love (1989), the story of a cop in a midlife crisis who falls for a woman who may be the killer hes pursuing, made a star of Ellen Barkin and restored Pacinos box-office clout. [63] The film did moderately well at the box office, taking in $113million worldwide. (1969) and Best Actor in a Play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977). But when a producer was eventually found she had her own ideas about casting. I always have, and will, promptly reply to the question, Whos your favourite actor? This is not a question that demands objective analysis its about my favourite. The two met at a dinner party in 2005, when his twins were four and her daughter, Camila, was seven. These people were a springboard for my profession, he said. After a few reverent questions from Ty Burr, the Boston Globes film critic, who was his interlocutor for the evening, Pacino picked up his legend and ran with it: performing as a kid for the deaf aunt (started my overacting, I guess); the high-school teacher who called him a prodigy (How do you spell that?); when he knew he had it as an actor (I hope I never do). I dont remember much of the seventies, he said. The real Al is easygoing, self-deprecating, with very few close friends that hes not let go of since he was 20 (including the person responsible for everything hes achieved Charlie Laughton). ", "A gangster movie with heart: how Al Pacino and Brian De Palma made the criminally underrated Carlito's Way", "Al Pacino, Robert De Niro discuss their famed 'Heat' face-off", "The Insider movie review & film summary (1999)", "Godfather's conversion into video game angers Coppola", "Hedging Its Bets, 'Two For the Money' Loses Big", "AFI Lifetime Achievement Award: Al Pacino", "Award Winning Actor, Al Pacino Visits Trinity College", "Adam Sandler's 'Jack and Jill' sweeps the 2011 Razzie Awards", "Al Pacino to receive special award at Venice Festival". Al! He was so sensitive that he was insensitive to his surroundings, Diane Keaton, with whom Pacino had an on-again-off-again relationship in the seventies and eighties, wrote in her memoir Then Again. Sometimes I swear Al must have been raised by wolves. He saw a new era., On January 17, 1967, for his first scene at the Actors Studio, Pacino presented a monologue from Eugene ONeills The Iceman Cometh, which morphed into a soliloquy from Hamlet. It was risky, but, as Pacino said, Its a risk not to take risks. Breaking a long-standing Studio tradition, the audience of actors applauded his performance. The survivor, Pacino said. Vittoria Coffee. [8][6]:12 Pacino's father was from San Fratello and moved to work as an insurance salesman and restaurateur in Covina, California. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. I see it. Hes channelling something. He was once employed as an usher at the iconic Carnegie Hall. [89][90], Pacino starred in a 2013 HBO biographical picture about record producer Phil Spector's murder trial, titled Phil Spector. The film was released on October 8, 2005, to mixed reviews. People my age are described as baby boomers, but our experiences call for a different label altogether. $120 million. [20] The men were inspired to invest by their connection with Lee Strasberg, as Strasberg's daughter-in-law Sabra Jones was the founder and Producing Artistic Director of The Mirror. He had to find the costume, rehearse in the costume, live in the costume., Some actors play characters. I have three children. "[72], On October 20, 2006, the American Film Institute named Pacino the recipient of the 35th AFI Life Achievement Award. [104] The film is based on a play by Dennis McIntyre, which was previously adapted for the 2004 film of the same name. Menu. The real Al understands this. I can almost not forgive myself for that., When preparing for a role, Pacino has a tendency to circle the airport before arriving at his destination. For the next twenty years I kept losing a man I never had. Sola expounded on the astuteness of Keatons observation. This is what Im meant to do, Pacino says of acting. (Its my second-most loved ending with the first being that in Bourne Ultimatum). Oscar had the brains to back it up. Pacino, whose formal education ended in tenth grade, grappled for years with a sense of intellectual inadequacy. I was free. (The film was never released theatrically but was included in the DVD boxed set Pacino: An Actors Vision.), Although Pacino remembers this time as probably the best period of his adult lifeIt was as close to egoless as Ive ever beenfour years into his self-imposed exile from Hollywood he was running out of money and Keaton was running out of patience. A method actor and former student of the HB Studio and the Actors Studio, where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg, Pacino's film debut came at the age of 29 with a minor role in Me, Natalie (1969). Poor people dont go into this. Pacino said, I didnt know what she was talking about. We did a lot of improvisation, Levinson said. [5]:xix[6]:2 His parents divorced when he was two years old. . It was a whirlwind. Pacino disappeared into work, and, after hours, into a bottle. [45], In 1991, Pacino starred in Frankie and Johnny with Michelle Pfeiffer, who co-starred with Pacino in Scarface. And the somewhere else does not have to do with words. Pacino almost never talks shop. This definitive melting pot is what I came from. The New York City native studied as a keen method actor at HB Studio and the Actors Studio under the adept tuition of Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg. I liked the idea that an actor is losing it and wants to revive not so much his career as his life, and finds that theres no life there, Pacino said. (Somebody came up and said to my mother, Heres the next Brando. I said, Whos Brando? Pacino recalled.) And the audience connected to this terrible sense of humiliation, of unworthiness. Pacino won an Obie for Best Actor, and a Tony the following year, for his performance in Don Petersens Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?. And "Al" is the name of the actor himself. At one point, Olivia came in to ask a favor: Olivia: Daddy, I really want to see the boy next door. Pacino: Does he really? During the flight, he talked about another kind of blessing hed felt that day. Al Pacino is an American Actor of both stage and screen who has a net worth of $120 million. Throughout the clumsy speech, he keeps repeating, God, I cant do this, I need a character. That was maddeningly sad for me to watch. Pacino went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Scent of a Woman (1992). When Tony Montana drunkenly turned on the scowling patrons of a swank restaurant (Say good night to the bad guy!), the audience roared. By the next frame, his score was fifteen. I think thats how it started. Pacino was often coaxed into performing scenes for his extended family, which included a deaf aunt. Hes consulting somewhere else. Once on the theater scene, Pacino entered a period of depression . During his first year of sobriety, a time of great stress, Pacino made Bobby Deerfield, a plodding Sydney Pollack melodrama, in which he played a celebrity race-car driver, who hides his vulnerability behind sunglasses and a carapace of toughness. Most actors of Pacinos statureBrando, Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Nirobegan in theatre and rarely returned. [8], During later interviews he spoke about Strasberg and the Studio's effect on his career. The picture had a fire to it, Pacino said, in Al Pacino: In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel. The violence blown up, the language blown up. It was a great gift.. When it was Pacinos turn, he came out singing, then crossed to downstage center and looked directly at the producer: Startled and terrified, according to Horovitz, she agreed to cast Pacino. I consciously knew that I didnt want to be like my dad. Clifford Odets and David Mamet on winners and losers. [110][111] He achieved sobriety in 1977. [92] In 2016, Pacino received the Kennedy Center Honor. Huh? They called me out six times after I bowed. After the show, he added, I would bawl my eyes out. . He pointed out a watercolor beside the fireplace. I put an eight-by-ten picture of me on the doorkind of looking handsome. In the twenty years following the release of The Godfather, Pacino made seventeen films and was nominated for an Academy Award six times. The movie cost twenty-eight million dollars to make and grossed less than $360,000. [5]:8 Growing up in the South Bronx, Pacino got into occasional fights and was considered somewhat of a troublemaker at school. She reminded me of a Tennessee Williams character. Afterward, he addressed Pacino. [40], In 1985, Pacino worked on his personal project, The Local Stigmatic, a 1969 off-Broadway play by the English writer Heathcote Williams. He started screaming at me, How dare you! He was absolutely flipping out. Pacino asked Laughton, What was going on? A new era, Laughton said. [95] Paterno premiered on HBO on April 7, 2018. Access the best of Getty Images with our simple subscription plan. . I was at a function for the South Bronx, which is where I'm . But I knew it produced laughs., On Bryant Avenue in the forties and fifties, people escaped their small, hot apartments to sit on stoops or hang out under street lamps to roll dice or play poker. Thirty minutes after they arrived, she was leading Pacino toward the exit. I went back in there and finished the run., Laughton, who was for years wheelchair-bound with multiple sclerosis and who died in 2013, at the age of eighty-four, remained an emotional bulwark for Pacino until the end. But Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather and adapted it for the screen, came to Coppolas defense and gave him a letter to be used at his discretion. His friends and family prevent him from getting lost in those roles, and he is intelligent enough to be able to channel personal emotions for dialogues, without making an absolute getaway into his past. They are not, so to speak, the rock-em-sock-em Pacino of old but a new Pacino: a man who is consolidating his family, regretting some of his life choices, and living under the strictures of his fame. [86][87][88] Pacino, who plays the role of Herod in the film, describes it as his "most personal project ever". To disarm bullies and find friends, Pacino used the same strategy on the street that hed used at home: he performed and enlisted others to perform with him, earning the nickname the Actor. Wed act out parts from joke books and comic books, he told me. Considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, he has received numerous accolades: including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making him one of the few performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting. Get out! By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. No wordsits a look, a glance, small things that really inform the character., Over the years, there have been rumblings about Pacinos overacting. I couldnt get him out of my head, said Francis Ford Coppola, who nearly got fired from The Godfather (1972) for insisting that Pacino play Michael Corleone, the educated youngest son of Don Corleone, the Mafia kingpin. [46] Janet Maslin in The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Pacino has not been this uncomplicatedly appealing since his Dog Day Afternoon days, and he makes Johnny's endless enterprise in wooing Frankie a delight. Pacino had been spooked in that way before, in his Off-Off Broadway dbut, in a production of William Saroyans Hello Out There, which grew out of Laughtons classes. The audience is another character in the play, he said. Stage acting, he likes to say, quoting the aerialist Karl Wallenda, is life on the wirethe rest is just waiting. Onstage, in the zone, he told me, youre up in the sky with the theatre godslove it, love it, love it. As a list of some of Pacinos more esoteric stage work demonstratesEugene ONeills Hughie, Bertolt Brechts The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Shakespeares Richard III and The Merchant of Venicethe theatre is where he goes to challenge himself and to think. Im not being waited on? The back-and-forth agitated him to such a degree that he finally refused to take Coppolas calls and made the actress Jill Clayburgh, his girlfriend at the time, speak for him. If not much, here is what we know about Al Pacino to date. In a radical move, at the height of his celebrity, Pacino called a halt to movie-making and moved to Snedens Landing, in Palisades, New York, with Diane Keaton. It was a way of filling up the loneliness., Storytelling ran in the family. Shed peek through the door and say, Half hour, then, Fifteen minutes. Shed come back again and say, Five minutes. I would say, Fuck off, each time, Pacino told me. Despite the familys meagre income, Rose scraped together enough to pay for visits to a psychiatrist. (1982), Scarface (1983), The Godfather Part III (1990), Carlito's Way (1993), Heat (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), The Devil's Advocate (1997), The Insider (1999), Insomnia (2002), Jack and Jill (2011), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and House of Gucci (2021). In 2007, the American Film Institute awarded Pacino with a lifetime achievement award and, in 2003, British television viewers voted Pacino as the greatest film star of all time in a poll for Channel 4. The film received generally favorable reviews. To treat her chronic depression, she resorted to electric-shock therapy. So, as we were bowing, I looked over to the space where I believed the look was coming from and there it was, two seeing-eye dogs still looking at me. al pacino charles laughton al pacino laughing al pacino laugh Pacino started performing in plays in the late 1960s. Pacino produced and starred in a fascinating film version of the play. 14. Once, when they were twelve and sitting on the steps of a tenement after finishing a game of stickball, Lipper said, some guy came over who was thirtyish and started menacing us. Al Pacino, in full Alfredo James Pacino, (born April 25, 1940, New York, New York, U.S.), American actor best known for his intense, explosive acting style. And the costume was important, too. The very final shotin The Godfather, when he lies very unequivocally to Diane Keaton, before the door shuts with him officially taking up his fathers place still brings chills to my spine. Its strictly business; he shouted, Attica! On television, Pacino has acted in several productions for HBO, including Angels in America (2003) and the Jack Kevorkian biopic You Don't Know Jack (2010), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for each. It was adapted by Terrence McNally from his own off-Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1987), that featured Kenneth Welsh and Kathy Bates. Inevitably, they stop in front of his rented house, which, like the actor, is elegantly dishevelled. Performing, for him, is not so much a profession as a destiny. Theres a dark comedic trail to the piece. The film was undertaken with a freewheeling spirit. [24] The acclaimed production moved to Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in October, earning US$1million at the box office in its first week. These people are asking me to do things for them? Its been so long since Ive seen him. Following a successful stage career over the late 1960s, Pacino made his film debut with a small role in Fred Coe's Me, Natalie , an independent film starring Patty Duke. Medal of Arts. By then, Salvatore, who married five times and for decades worked as an insurance salesman for Metropolitan Life, owned Pacinos Lounge, a restaurant and bar in Covina, California, where he frequently joined the band to sing, play the maracas, and shake his booty. [85] In February 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Pacino the National Medal of Arts. where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg, Pacino's film debut came at the . He starred in the play, remounting it with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in a 50-minute film version. Pacinos first line got a laugh, but he didnt understand the joke. Thats not how I come upon a role. Were blessed, man, Bellamy said. Nonetheless, the buses stop, the guides burble, and the tourists crane for a sign of the actor or his children. [74], Pacino starred in Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Thirteen, alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould and Andy Garca, as the villain Willy Bank, a casino tycoon targeted by Danny Ocean and his crew. I think you wear it inside yourself, and you find a way to avoid, as much as you can, the obvious. However, after his first week of avoiding the obvious, according to Pacino, they wanted me firedthey didnt see what I was doing. But one day I want to rent a small house on a lake. Its a riveting flick and a DePalma masterclass, but it was criticized heavily upon its release. [13], In 1967, Pacino spent a season at the Charles Playhouse in Boston, performing in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! Charlie [Laughton]: 'Wow, they talk about it being . Im not gonna go there. He also turned down Star Wars, Die Hard, and Pretty Woman.) But perhaps the most satisfying response came from Puzo, who wrote, It was, in my eyes, a perfect performance, a work of art. Pacino tested three times for the role. She was playful, with a good sense of humor, but also volatile and reclusive. We wanted to flesh that out a little bit more, to apply some of the things that Als gone through in his life, and, hopefully, not in a super-serious fashion. Author! His instinct was to bide his time. . The first two letters 'Ch' is a tribute to his dear friend Charlie Laughton and the suffix 'Al' is from his own nickname. In the late afternoon, with his bodyguard a hundred feet away, Pacino had spent an hour on Boston Common, sitting unnoticed on a bench and watching the passers-by. "[5]:15 In another interview he added, "It was exciting to work for him [Lee Strasberg] because he was so interesting when he talked about a scene or talked about people.