Pacino, Al

PACINO, Al

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Nationality: American. Born: Alfredo James Pacino in New York City, 25 April 1940. Education: Attended High School of the Performing Arts, New York; Herbert Berghof Studio under Charles Laughton; Actors Studio, New York, from 1966. Career: Worked as mail boy, in the offices of Commentary magazine, a movie usher, and building superintendent; then actor off-off-Broadway; 1969—Broadway debut in Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? ; film debut in Me, Natalie ; 1970—member of the Lincoln Center repertory theater; director of stage play Rats in Boston; 1977—in stage play The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel in Boston, and New York; 1982–84—co-artistic director, Actors Studio; 1984—London stage debut in American Buffalo. Awards: Best Supporting Actor, National Board of Review, Best Actor, National Society of Film Critics, for The Godfather, 1972; Best Actor, National Board of Review, Best Motion Picture Actor—Drama, Golden Globe, for Serpico, 1973; Best Actor, British Academy Award, for The Godfather, Part II, 1974; Best Actor, British Academy Award, Best Actor, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Best Actor, San Sebastian International Film Festival, for Dog Day Afternoon, 1975; Best Actor, Academy Award, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture—Drama, Golden Globe Award, for Scent of a Woman, 1992; Chevalier dans l'Orde des Arts et de Lettres, 1995; Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary, Directors Guild of America, Best Actor, Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, for Donnie Brasco, 1997. Agent: c/o CAA 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, U.S.A.

Films as Actor:

1969

Me, Natalie (Coe) (as Tony)

1971

Panic in Needle Park (Schatzberg) (as Bobby)

1972

The Godfather (Coppola) (as Michael Corleone)

1973

Scarecrow (Schatzberg) (as Lion); Serpico (Lumet) (as Frank Serpico)

1974

The Godfather, Part II (Coppola) (as Michael Corleone)

1975

Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet) (as Sonny)

1977

Bobby Deerfield (Pollack) (as Bobby Deerfield)

1979

. . . And Justice for All (Jewison) (as Arthur Kirkland)

1980

Cruising (Friedkin) (as Steve Burns)

1982

Author! Author! (Hiller) (as Travalian)

1983

Scarface (De Palma) (as Tony Montana)

1985

Revolution (Hudson) (as Tom Dobb)

1989

Sea of Love (Becker) (as Frank Keller)

1990

Dick Tracy (Beatty) (as Big Boy Caprice); The Godfather, Part III (Coppola) (as Michael Corleone)

1991

Frankie and Johnny (Garry Marshall) (as Johnny)

1992

Scent of a Woman (Brest) (as Lt. Col. Frank Slade); Glengarry Glen Ross (Foley) (as Ricky Roma)

1993

Carlito's Way (De Palma) (as Carlito Brigante); Jonas in the Desert (as Himself)

1995

Two Bits (A Day to Remember ) (James Foley) (as Gitano Sabatoni); Heat (Michael Mann) (as Vincent Hanna)

1996

City Hall (Becker) (as Mayor John Pappas); Donnie Brasco (Newell) (as Lefty Ruggiero)

1997

The Devil's Advocate (Hackford) (as John Milton)

1999

The Insider (Mann) (as Lowell Bergman); Any Given Sunday (Stone) (as Tony D'Amato)

Film as Director:

1996

Looking for Richard (+ ro as Richard III, pr, co-sc)

1999

Chinese Coffee (+ ro as Harry)

Publications

By PACINO: articles—

Interview, in Time Out (London), 6 September 1984.

Interview, in Ciné Revue (Paris), 30 January 1986.

Interview with J. Schnabel, in Interview (New York), February 1991.

Interview with Teresa Carpenter, in Guardian (London), 3 Decem-ber 1991.

On PACINO: books—

Zuckerman, Ira, The Godfather Journal, New York, 1972.

Puzo, Mario, The Making of The Godfather, Greenwich, Connecti-cut, 1973.

Yule, Andrew, Life on the Wire: The Life and Art of Al Pacino, New York, 1991.

Schoell, William, The Films of Al Pacino, Secaucus, New Jer-sey, 1995.

On PACINO: articles—

Current Biography 1974, New York, 1974.

Thomson, D., "Two Gentlemen of Corleone," in Take One (Montr-eal), May 1978.

Strasberg, Lee, in Photoplay (New York), April 1980.

Williamson, Bruce, "Al Pacino," in The Movie Star, edited by Elisabeth Weis, New York, 1981.

Image et Son (Paris), January 1982.

Chute, David, "Scarface," in Film Comment (New York), Febru-ary 1984.

Stivers, Cyndi, "Sunny-Side Up," in Premiere (New York), Octo-ber 1991.

Richards, David, "Sunday View: Pacino's Star Turn Reflects the Glories of Rep," in New York Times, 5 July 1992.

Minsky, Terri, "Descent of a Man," in Premiere (New York), February 1993.

Dullea, Georgia, "Al Pacino Confronts a Gala, Kudos, Fame and His Own Shyness," in New York Times, 22 February 1993.

Film Dope (Nottingham), April 1994.

Weinraub, Bernard, "De Niro! Pacino! Together Again for First Time," in New York Times, 27 July 1995.

Breslin, Jimmy, "The Oddfather," in Esquire (New York), Febru-ary 1996.

Reed, Rex, "Al's oeuvre," in Esquire (New York), February 1996.

Lemon, B., "Stage Center," in New Yorker, 12 August 1996.

Andrew, Geoff, "To Play the King," in Time Out (London), 15 January 1997.

Bourget, Jean-Loup, Michel Ciment, and Michel Cieutat, "Al Pacino," in Positif (Paris), February 1997.

Norman, Barry, "Why Pacino's Way Is a Winner," in Radio Times (London), 1 February 1997.

Macnab, Geoffrey, and John Wrathall, "The Infiltrator/Donnie Brasco," in Sight and Sound (London), May 1997.

* * *

Al Pacino's career is connected to that of his Italian-American contemporary, Robert De Niro. Both New York City-born, they each became movie stars in the early 1970s, and have more often than not played vividly realized characters who exist (on both sides of the law) within contemporary urban milieus. Pacino's first major role is Michael Corleone in The Godfather ; De Niro played Michael's father in the sequel, The Godfather, Part II. Two decades later, they were masterly paired in Heat, with Pacino the cop who obsessively tracks De Niro's hood. Finally, and most importantly, their acting styles clearly derive from the Method school, with Pacino remaining an important force in the continuation and development of New York's famed Actors Studio.

Pacino's acting roots are apparent in his earliest performances, which emphasize spontaneity, improvisation, and a flamboyance of manner and expression to a point where acting threatens to become the films' raison d'être. This is precisely the case in his roles as the young junkie in Panic in Needle Park, the drifter who has abandoned his family in Scarecrow, the honest New York cop singlehandedly fighting a corrupt police department in Serpico, and the would-be bankrobber who desires to finance his lover's sex change operation in Dog Day Afternoon. It is his appearances in these films (as well as The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II ) which established Pacino as one of the 1970s' most important stars. His performances in the first four are tours de force of an almost crazed nervous energy combined with a deep intensity and vulnerability. This energy appears at once a positive trait, infectious and irresistible, and a mask, a defense against the constant threat posed by the other characters or forces at work in the story.

But it was his work in the two Godfather films which required Pacino to create a far more complexly psychological characterization. Here, his acting style changes drastically, as he becomes more restrained and understated. His Michael Corleone starts out a young, all-American war hero, a man with decent instincts and the type of guy one would expect to marry, raise a family, and become a pillar of his community. As time passes and Michael finds himself becoming more deeply and inexorably involved in his family's "business," Pacino gradually and ever-so-subtly develops his character into a powerful but nonetheless tragic figure: a man who has allowed himself to be seduced and ultimately corrupted, to the point where he is capable of instigating the most vicious and horribly evil actions (such as ordering the murder of Fredo, his own brother). Unlike his psychotic other brother Sonny, who is primarily ruled by his temper and emotions, Michael is an intelligent man who should know better. So his soul becomes tainted, and he becomes at once emotionally repressed and tragically incapable of altering his fate. He is consumed by a cloak of weariness which haunts him, overriding and defining his character more than any amount of power he has achieved. This aspect of his evolving character plays itself out dramatically in the third Godfather film, made a decade and a half after The Godfather, Part II, in which Michael Corleone suffers through the death of his beloved daughter.

Pacino's career has not been without its share of miscalculations. Chief among them are Cruising, a distasteful, embarrassing thriller in which his character, a New York City cop, goes undercover and enters a gay netherworld in order to seek out a killer; Bobby Deerfield, an awful soaper in which he plays a race car driver romancing a beautiful but seriously ill woman; Revolution, a preposterous Revolutionary War drama in which he is cast as a trapper; and Scarface, by far his worst screen performance, in which he overacts outrageously as a Cuban drug dealer. But Pacino's stardom remained intact, and he has endured into the 1990s and beyond as a major movie personality whose casting in a film makes that film an event.

—Robin Wood

He ended the 1980s with a solid star turn as another New York cop in Sea of Love, generating sufficient heat in his love scenes with Ellen Barkin and exhibiting the abundant array of emotions experienced by his character. The same is the case in Carlito's Way, in which he plays a weary, streetwise Puerto Rican criminal attempting to go straight. He was never more ingratiating as an ex-con who falls for a reluctant waitress in Frankie and Johnny ; he effectively reprised Michael Corleone in the otherwise disappointing The Godfather, Part III ; he was fun to watch as the vividly menacing Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy ; and he graduated to senior citizen roles, nicely playing a wise old Italian immigrant grandfather in Two Bits, a Depression-era nostalgia piece.

In two of Pacino's most important 1990s films, he plays flamboyant characters who are, in their manner, aging extensions of his roles in The Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow, Dog Day Afternoon, and Serpico. He earned a long-overdue Academy Award for Scent of a Woman, playing a blind, cantankerous, ultimately suicidal ex-Army colonel. But he is even better in Glengarry Glen Ross, adapted by David Mamet from his stage play about the pressures on, and frustrations of, a group of real estate salesmen. Pacino plays Ricky Roma, a character who is tough, hard, and slick. Roma is a hotshot who lays a psychological-metaphysical line on his clients like a master manipulator. Those who have come to Roma to inquire about purchasing property are not so much his clients as his victims. As Roma, Pacino offers an acting tour de force. To watch him here, spouting Mamet's bristling dialogue—at once vivid and knowing, with brush strokes both subtle and broad—is to see a master actor at the top of his form.

The second half of the decade saw Pacino cast as an old-guard pro football coach/raspy-voiced warhorse (in Any Given Sunday ); an aging, tired, low-level wiseguy (in Donnie Brasco, playing a character who, on the gangland food chain, is the antithesis of Michael Corleone); a dedicated television newsmagazine producer who is a Woodward/Bernstein clone, and is Serpico -like in his tenacity (in The Insider ); and the devil himself, the charismatic, demonic head of a high-powered law firm (in The Devil's Advocate ). Throughout his career, so many of Pacino's characters, whether cop or con man, are New York City-based. So it was appropriate, then, that in City Hall he played the Mayor of New York. In all these films, Pacino is a delight to watch—particularly when his characters are pointing, shouting, and allowing their emotions to flow across the screen.

Throughout his career, Pacino often has returned to the stage, where he has played Shakespearean roles, including Richard III and Julius Caesar. He entered the directorial ranks in 1996 with a film that was personal and special to him: Looking for Richard, an ambitious documentary that is an ode to the Bard and a reflection of Pacino's unending fascinating with the character of Richard III. In Looking for Richard, Pacino illustrates how Shakespeare writes "great words" with "great meaning," and teaches the audience to "feel." He includes man-and-woman-on-the-street interviews that elicit responses to and feelings about Shakespeare, and points out the fallacy that only English actors can play the Bard. Looking for Richard also is an examination of the character of Richard III, with Pacino mounting and casting a production of the play. Primarily, the film works as a welcome reminder of the manner in which the emotions and conflicts of Shakespeare remain ever-relevant to today's world.

—updated by Rob Edelman