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Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (born April 25, 1940) is an iconic Academy Award-winning American stage and film actor, widely renowned as one of the finest of his generation.
Early life
Regarded by many to be one of the seminal actors of his generation, Pacino was born in The Bronx, New York to Italian American parents Salvatore Pacino (who was born in the Sicilian town of Corleone) and Rose Gerard (the daughter of an Italian-born father and a New York-born mother of Italian descent). His parents divorced while Pacino was still a child. His grandparents originated from Corleone, Sicily.
Career
In 1966, Pacino studied under legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg (alongside whom he would later feature in the 1974 film The Godfather Part II), finding acting a therapeutic outlet in a youth which saw him depressed and so impoverished he could barely afford the bus fares required to get him to his next audition. Yet by the end of the decade, he had won an Obie award for his stage work in The Indian Wants the Bronx and a Tony award for Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? His movie debut came in 1969's Me, Natalie but it was the 1971 film The Panic in Needle Park, in which he played a heroin addict, that would showcase his talents and bring him to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola.
Pacino's rise to fame came after portraying Michael Corleone in Coppola's blockbuster 1972 Mafia film The Godfather and Frank Serpico in the eponymous 1973 movie. Although numerous established actors, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and a then unknown Robert De Niro, were vying to portray Michael Corleone, Coppola selected the relatively unknown Pacino. His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1973 Pacino starred in the very successful Serpico and the less popular Scarecrow alongside Gene Hackman. 1974 saw The Godfather Part II. In 1975, Pacino reached the first height of his popularity when Dog Day Afternoon was released. The film was based on the true story of bank robber John Wojtowicz.
By the end of the 1970s he would have three more nominations, all for Best Actor. Despite further nominations, it wasn't until 1993 that Pacino would win an Oscar, for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the depressed, irascible, retired and blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman. That year, he was also up for the supporting award for his role in Glengarry Glen Ross, making Pacino the first male actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and the first actor of either gender to achieve that feat and win for the lead acting nomination. (Jamie Foxx did the same in 2005.) Pacino has not received another nomination from the Academy since those two, but has won two Golden Globes since the turn of the century, the first being the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion picture, and the second for his role in the highly praised HBO miniseries Angels in America.
Pacino's career took a downturn in the early 1980s and his appearances in the controversial Cruising and the comedy-drama Author! Author! saw him critically panned. 1983's Scarface proved to be both a career highlight and a defining role, earning Pacino a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as a Cuban drug lord who cries out the now famous line, punctuated by a grenade launcher blast, "You wanna play rough? Okay! Say hello to my little friend!".
However, 1985's Revolution was a commercial and a critical failure, and Pacino returned to stage work for four years. He mounted workshop productions of Crystal Clear, National Anthems and other plays; appeared in Julius Caesar in 1988 for producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival; and worked on his most personal project, The Local Stigmatic, a play he had starred in Off Broadway in 1969 then re-mounted in 1985 with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in order to film a 50-minute movie version unreleased as of 2005.
Pacino remarked on his film hiatus that, "I remember back when everything was happening, '74, '75, doing The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui on stage and reading that the reason I'd gone back to the stage was that my movie career was waning! That's been the kind of ethos, the way in which theater's perceived, unfortunately" *.
Pacino re-surfaced in film in 1989's Sea of Love, which was to signal a return to form. The next year, in 1990, he received an Oscar nomination as Big Boy Caprice in the box office hit Dick Tracy. Pacino was nominated for, and won, a belated Academy Award for his role as the blind ex-Army Officer in "Scent of A Woman." Pacino has turned in acclaimed performances in such crime thrillers as Carlito's Way, Heat, and Insomnia, the crime docudrama Donnie Brasco, the multi-Oscar nominated The Insider, the supernatural drama The Devil's Advocate, and others.
In 1995 Pacino starred in Michael Mann's Heat, in which he and fellow film icon Robert De Niro appeared on screen for the first time ever. The duo drew much attention from fans, as both actors have generally been compared throughout their careers. Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather Part II, they didn't share any screen time together. Both performances in Heat are considered highlights in their careers, especially in how the two interact through out the scenes they share.
Pacino has turned down a number of key roles in his career, including that of Han Solo in A New Hope, Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, Richard Sherman in a remake of The Seven Year Itch (which was never filmed) and Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman. In 1996 Pacino was set to play General Manuel Noriega in a major biographical motion picture when director Oliver Stone pulled the plug on production to focus on the movie Nixon. Additionally, Pacino had recently turned down the offer to reprise the role of Michael Corleone in The Game, due to the fact that his voice had changed dramatically since he played the young Michael. As a result, Electronic Arts could not use Pacino's likeness or voice in the game (although Michael does appear in it). It is rumoured that this decision was made by Pacino due to a conflict with EA's rival game publisher, Vivendi Universal, who are preparing to publish a competing movie-to-game adaptation of the 1983 remake of Scarface, titled The World is Yours.
The quality of Pacino's performances, as well as his larger-than-life onscreen presence, has established him as one of the world's major actors. Pacino still performs theater work and has also dabbled in direction. While The Local Stigmatic remains unreleased, his theatrical feature Looking for Richard and his film festival-screened Chinese Coffee earned good notices. Several characters essayed by Pacino are famous in popular culture. On the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, he is only the second actor to have three appearances on both lists: on the heroes as Frank Serpico and on the villains list as Tony Montana and Michael Corleone.
Although he has never been married, Pacino has three children. The first, Julie Marie is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, Anton and Olivia, with ex-girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo.
Filmography
Salary
- S1m0ne (2002) $11,000,000
- Part III (1990) $5,000,000
- And Justice for All (1979) $1,000,000
- Part II (1974) $500,000 and 10% of the gross after break-even
- The Godfather (1973) $35,000
External links
- Al Pacino Timeline
- Los Angeles Times, Sunday, Sept. 17, 1989: "Pacino Re-Focuses on Film Career: After Five-Year Absence, Actor Returns to the Big Screen", by Frank Lovece
- Biography by Jonathan Dunder
1940 births | American film actors | American film directors | BAFTA winners | Best Actor Oscar | Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominees | Emmy Award winners | Greenwich Village scene | Italian American actors | Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute alumni | Living people | People from the Bronx | Roman Catholic entertainers | Sicilian-Americans | English-language film directors
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"Al Pacino"