Al Pacino¶

At a glance¶

Born: April 25, 1940, East Harlem, New York
Raised: South Bronx, by his mother and Sicilian grandparents from Corleone
Trained: HB Studio; the Actors Studio, under Lee Strasberg
Academy Award: 1 — Scent of a Woman (1993). None for Michael Corleone.
Godfather role: Michael Corleone, all three films
Honors: 2 Tonys, 2 Emmys, 4 Golden Globes, AFI Life Achievement, Kennedy Center, National Medal of Arts

I never saw Michael as a gangster. He was a man solving a problem. Al Pacino

Before¶

Born in East Harlem; his parents divorced when he was two and he was raised in the South Bronx by his mother Rose and her parents — who had emigrated from Corleone, Sicily. His mother nicknamed him Sonny Boy, after the Al Jolson song, which he used as the title of his 2024 memoir.

It was a rough childhood by his own account, and two of his closest friends died of drug use. He has consistently credited his mother with keeping him out of it, and a junior high teacher, Blanche Rothstein, with putting him on a stage.

He went to the High School of Performing Arts, dropped out, worked menial jobs, and trained at HB Studio under Charlie Laughton and then at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His Broadway debut in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969) won a Tony despite the production closing in 39 performances. He won a second Tony in 1977 for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.

His film breakthrough was The Panic in Needle Park (1971), which is the tape that convinced Coppola.

Michael¶

He was 31, essentially unknown, and Paramount did not want him. The studio wanted Redford, Beatty, O'Neal, or Delon. Their stated objections were that he was an unknown and that he was short. Coppola's counter-argument was that Michael is supposed to be the least imposing man in the room.

Then he nearly lost it anyway. His early dailies read as flat and passive; the studio agitated for weeks to replace him. What saved him — and, by Coppola's account, saved Coppola too — was the restaurant scene, shot after the pressure peaked, in which the stillness the executives had been reading as nothing suddenly reads as everything.

The technical achievement across the trilogy is subtraction. From 1972 to 1974 Pacino systematically removes the warmth, the eye contact, the vocal variation, and the hand gestures, until by Havana he is essentially a face that occasionally speaks. In Part III, sixteen years later, he brings some of it back — a man who has been hollow for two decades trying to remember how to feel something, and the confession scene with Cardinal Lamberto is arguably the best thing he has ever done.

He was nominated in Supporting Actor for the first film — a placement he publicly objected to, on the grounds that he has more screen time than Brando, and reportedly boycotted the ceremony over. He was nominated in Lead for Part II and lost to Art Carney in Harry and Tonto, routinely listed among the Academy's worst calls.

He never won for Michael Corleone.

The rest¶

The 1970s are one of the great runs in film acting: Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), …And Justice for All (1979) — five nominations in eight years, no wins.

Then a slump — Cruising (1980), Author! Author!, and the initially reviled Scarface (1983), which became one of the most influential films of its decade by a route nobody predicted. After Revolution (1985) he left the screen for four years and went back to the stage.

He returned with Sea of Love (1989), Dick Tracy, The Godfather Part III, and then in 1992 was nominated twice in one year — Supporting for Glengarry Glen Ross and Lead for Scent of a Woman, which finally won. The consensus at the time and since is that it was a career award for the wrong performance.

Since: Carlito's Way (1993), Heat (1995) — his first on-screen scene with De Niro — Donnie Brasco, The Insider, Angels in America (Emmy), You Don't Know Jack (Emmy), and The Irishman (2019), a nomination at 79.

He published Sonny Boy in October 2024.

On playing Michael¶

His two most useful remarks about the part:

That Michael isn't a gangster. Pacino has said repeatedly that he never played him as one — that Michael at every moment believes he is fixing something, and that nobody in the trilogy ever hears him describe himself as a criminal. That belief is what makes the performance frightening rather than merely cold.

That the war did it. He has attributed Michael's capacity for violence to the Marines rather than the family — the son who left, learned to kill for a country that called it heroism, came back decorated, and then applied the same skill at home.