But, “Hamlet” is “my favorite play of Shakespeare,” he confesses. He has performed “Richard III” many times, including in “Looking for Richard,” a 1996 exploration of the work that he directed and financed. He keeps doing theater, his first love, including a 2010 New York performance of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” that critics deemed revelatory.
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“Then he translates it into the language of the script.” “He’ll write out the whole part, the text of the dialogue, then interpret in the terms of language he would normally colloquially use,” Coppola says. More indelible lines of dialogue are associated with him than with almost any other actor, a testament not only to the way the roles were written but to how he came to own them. John Cazale, left, and Pacino in the 1975 film “Dog Day Afternoon.” (Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images) In the span of a dozen years, beginning with 1971’s “The Panic in Needle Park,” he created a cinematic canon that few can best: the first two “Godfathers,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon” (he initially turned down the great Sidney Lumet “What can I say? I was ignorant”) and “Scarface,” eviscerated by critics at the time but ultimately placed atop pop culture’s altar. “There are actors who are admired, but Al they embrace.” “I can’t think of any actor whom people care more about in films than Al,” says friend Alec Baldwin, who has appeared in two of his movies. He’s also that rare actor who is not just admired but loved by his peers. He’s filming “Hangman” with Johnny Martin, an unknown director. Famous for saying no in the beginning of his career, “the last 20 years, I say yes more. Pacino has been a star for 44 years, yet he still displays a penchant for risk and for working with young talent. “He always looks like he slept on someone’s couch.”
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“He never looks like a movie star,” says Ellen Burstyn, his co-president at the Actors Studio. The get-up - baggy black T-shirt, baggy black pants, oversized silver and black ring - is impossible. I’ve been in therapy my whole life.”Īmong Pacino’s ancillary talents is making fine Italian suiting - he’s wearing a tuxedo jacket for day - look like thrift-store rejects. “Talk is therapy,” he says, opening his arms.
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Where Robert De Niro recedes in public appearances, all nods and mumbles, Pacino offers a banquet of observations. His voice, a Bronx rasp, shades the world in italics.
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His skin is tanned the color of cognac the hair a tempest. Everything, except his physical stature, is outsize. He’s at ease, but he doesn’t fit, an inveterate New Yorker in a far too sunny place.īuses loiter on his block every few minutes, tourists trying to steal a glimpse beyond the gates of the man whom film historian David Thomson in 2002 deemed “our greatest actor now.” Pacino is the winner of an Oscar (eight nominations), two Tonys, two Emmys, four Golden Globes (17 nominations) and a National Medal of Arts. Pacino is sipping tea, surrounded by hounds, in front of his white-columned house in this fabled, palm-lined enclave. Pacino, the New York Times noted, is “an actor worthy to have Brando as his father.” Audiences saw what he was doing, having Michael’s character build with the story. Pacino, who will receive a Kennedy Center Honor on Dec. It’s the law-abiding son’s first mob hit, and it seals his fate as his father’s replacement. Michael, teeth clenched, eyes darting, grabs the gun hidden in the restaurant bathroom and shoots Corleone rival Sollozzo and corrupt New York police captain McCluskey. “He uses what he has, this striking magnetic quality, this smoldering ambiance.”
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He knows how to use his gifts,” says Coppola. He had always envisioned Pacino, already an acclaimed New York stage actor, as Michael. Writer and director Francis Ford Coppola believed. “I was trying to create a character who you don’t know where you’re at with him,” he says. “ Michael? Sonny would be more appropriate,” he remembers thinking.īut ultimately, he knew what he was doing. Pacino himself thought that he would be better as the hotheaded older brother, instead of in the role that secured his stardom. Paramount had wanted Ryan O’Neal or Robert Redford to play Michael in “The Godfather,” America’s great epic about violence and family. Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in a scene from "The Godfather.” (AP)