Al Pacino- Multi-Award-Winning Actor of Stage and Screen 1940-

The one I love is what Wallenda said . . . “Life’s on the wire, the rest is just waiting.” That’s where life is for me. That’s where it happens. And it does.
—AL PACINO ON ACTING

Massionate. Brooding. Intense. Guarded. Obsessively private, liant actor. All describe eight-time Academy Award nominee Al Pacino. Sidney Ltimet, who directed Pacino in his Oscar-nominated performance in Dog Day Afternoon, said, “He is literally incapable of doing anything fake.” For Pacino, there are three reasons why he accepts a part—the director, the script, and the character. Explains Pacino, “If 1 relate greatly to the director, the text is pretty good and I think I can do something with the character, I might take it. Or, if I can relate greatly to the character and the text and the director are okay, I’ll take it too.” That’s a mellower Pacino talking. There was a time when all three elements had to be great.
Alfredo James Pacino, the only child of Salvatore and Rose I’acino, was born on April 2.5, 1940, in New York City. When he was two, his parents divorced, so Al and his mother moved in with her parents in the South Bronx. As a child, lie was quiet and shy and sheltered by his mother, who did not allow Al out of the house alone until he began going to school. His only connection with the outside world was when Rose would take him to a feature at the local movie theater. The rest of the time he hung around with his grandfather, spending hours listening to him tell stories about what New York was like in the early 1900s.
Al began honing his acting skills back then too, reenacting scenes that he remembered from the movies he saw. Once let loose on the outside world, Al was just a regular kid; he played ball, told tall tales that he tried out on his friends, and got into the usual street mischief.
At fourteen Al saw a production of the Anton Chekhov play The Seagull at the Elsmere Theater in the South Bronx, and was mesmerized. He decided that perhaps he wanted to become an actor, so he transferred to the High School of Performing Arts.
By seventeen the only subject he wasn’t failing was English, so he dropped out. Al drifted from job to job, and had plenty of them; he was a mail boy, a janitor, a shoe salesman, and an usher. He worked in a fruit store, a supermarket, and even moved furniture. His longest stretch in one job was working for (Commentary magazine.
From working various jobs, Pacino saved enough money to enroll in the Herbert Berghof Studio. That’s where he met Charlie Laughton, an acting teacher who introduced him to the things that surround acting, like directing and writing. Charlie became his father figure, brother, and friend. He got on the acting career path. Pacino started apprenticing, writing and directing oft-off-Broadway productions.
In 1966 Pacino applied to Lee Strasberg’s famed Actors Studio, where he was taught Method Acting (where you learn how to create a life for a character by using experiences and impressions from your own life). Things in Pacino’s career moved quickly after that. He worked with James Earl Jones in The Peace
Creeps and then starred in the off-Broadway drama The Indian Wants the Bronx, for which he won an Obie Award for Best Actor. The following year, Pacino made his Broadway debut in Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? Despite the fact that the play closed after only forty shows, Pacino received critical praise for his compelling performance as a drug addict and won his first Tony Award.
Pacino made his film debut in 1969 in Me, Natalie, which was a box-office flop. His next feature film was The Panic in Needle Park (1971). The film received mediocre reviews, but director Francis Ford Coppola took notice of Pacino’s performance and cast him as Michael Corleone, the reluctant Mafia son pushed into the family business in The Godfather. The film’s headliner cast included legendary actor Marlon Brando and Diane Keaton, James Caan, and Robert Duvall.
Throughout the filming, Pacino was tense, but he played the role brilliantly, transforming Michael from a quiet war hero to a cold, calculating mob boss. He got a 1972 Best Supporting Actor nomination, and suddenly was rocketed to stardom. Pacino went on a tour-year run, being nominated for Oscars in 1973 for his riveting performance in Serpico, a New York City cop who discloses corruption in the police department; in 1974 for reprising his role in The Godfather, Part II; and in 1975 as a volatile bisexual who botches a bank robbery in Dog Day A/iernoon.
Pacino made some bad choices in other films, like Bobby DeerfieU (\977), Cruising (1980), and the $28-million embarrassment Revolution (1985). Considering himself a theater actor first, Pacino was able to balance his unsuccessful films with his rewarding work onstage. He returned to Broadway to star in The Basic Train ing of Pavlo Hummel (1977), winning his second Tony Award.
In 1979 Pacino’s portrayal of a wacko lawyer in And Justice for All earned him a fifth Oscar nomination. He turned in an explosive performance as the chilling drug lord Tony Montana in Scarface (1983). As a change of pace, Pacino accepted supporting roles in the films Dick Tracy (1990) and Glengarry
Glen Ross (1992), receiving Oscar nominations for both performances. Finally, after seven unsuccessful bids for the golden statuette, Pacino won an Oscar in 1992, playing blind, disillusioned colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman.
There have been other film projects—Pacino reunited with Scarface director Brian DePalma to star in Carlito’s Way. In 1995 Pacino and Robert De Niro were finally teamed up in the film Heat. Working with notable stars Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco and Kcanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate, Pacino is still full-throttle in a career that has spanned more than a quarter of a century.
Though Pacino may well be most associated with his gritty tough-guy portrayals, his heart is never far from the theatrical stage. “The play is the thing. That’s my motivation,” says Pacino. He expanded bis work on the Broadway stage in front of packed houses, directing and starring in Eugene O’Neill’s one-act play Hughie. His fascination with Shakespeare, particularly the character Richard ill, prompted Pacino to direct and star in an unusual documentary-style film, entitled Looking for Richard (1996). In an almost frenzied search of the meaning of the English bard in everyday life, Pacino hit the streets of New York and asked people how they felt about Shakespeare, and his interpretation of the hunchbacked king Richard III. The impromptu street encounters are intermixed with a behind-the-scenes look at the casting, preparation, and rehearsals for Pacific’s film project, Richard III.
Pacino insists that for him acting is always about the work, the process. In 2000, at age sixty, he was awarded the Cecil B. DcMille Award and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Still, he moves to his own beat, always trying new things, looking for characters that will challenge him.
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