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Al Pacino

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Al Pacino
Born
Alfredo James Pacino
Occupation(s)Actor, Director, Screenwriter, Producer
AwardsNBR Award for Best Supporting Actor
1972 The Godfather
NBR Award for Best Actor
1973 Serpico
AFI Life Achievement Award
2007 Lifetime Achievement
Websitewww.alpacino.net

Alfredo James Pacino (born April 25, 1940) is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, Tony-, BAFTA-, Emmy- and SAG award-winning American film and stage actor and director, well known for his roles as Michael Corleone in the The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. Considered by many to be one of the finest thespians of his generation, Pacino was voted #1 on Total Film magazine's 100 greatest actors of all time.

Early Life

Pacino was born in East Harlem, Manhattan, the son of Italian-American parents Rose (née Gerardi) and Salvatore Alfred Pacino, who divorced when he was two years old.[1][2] His mother subsequently moved to the South Bronx, to live with her parents, Kate and James Gerardi, who originated from Corleone, Sicily.[3][4][5] His father moved to Covina, California, working as an insurance salesman and owner of his own restaurant called Pacino's Lounge, which closed down in 1992. Pacino attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts.

Career

1960s

In 1966, Pacino studied under legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg (alongside whom he would later feature in the 1974 film The Godfather Part II). He found acting to be enjoyable and realized he had a gift for it. However, it did put him in financial straits until the end of the decade when he had won an Obie Award for his work in The Indian Wants the Bronx and the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie?. He made his first screen appearance in an episode of the television series N.Y.P.D. in 1968, and his largely unnoticed movie debut in Me, Natalie came the following year.

1970s

File:Al Pacino and Robert Duvall in the Godfather.jpg
Pacino (right) as Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972)

It was the 1971 film The Panic in Needle Park, in which he played a heroin addict, that would 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 several established actors, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and a little-known Robert De Niro were vying to portray Michael Corleone, director Coppola selected the relatively unknown Pacino, much to the dismay of studio executives. His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination. Pacino's performance as Michael Corleone offers one of the finest examples of his early acting style, described by Halliwell's Film Guide as "intense" and "tightly clenched".

In 1973 Pacino starred in the very successful Serpico and the less popular Scarecrow alongside Gene Hackman. In 1974, Pacino reprised his role as Michael Corleone in the very successful sequel The Godfather Part II, acclaimed as being comparable to the original. In 1975, he enjoyed further success with the release of Dog Day Afternoon, based on the true story of a bank robber John Wojtowicz. In 1977, Pacino starred as a race-car driver in Bobby Deerfield, directed by Sydney Pollock and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor– Drama, for his portrayal of Bobby Deerfield, but lost out to Richard Burton, who ultimately won for Equus.

During the 1970s, Pacino had four Oscar nominations for Best Actor for his performances in Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and ...And Justice for All.

Pacino continued his dedication to the stage, winning a second Tony Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and performing the title role in Richard III for a record run on Broadway, despite poor notices from critics.

1980s

His career slumped in the early 1980s, and his appearances in the controversial Cruising and the comedy-drama Author! Author! were critically panned. However, 1983's Scarface, directed by Brian DePalma, proved to be a career highlight and a defining role. Upon its initial release, the film was critically panned but did well at the box office, grossing over $45 million domestically.[6] Pacino earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in Scarface as a Cuban drug gangster. Years later, he would reveal to interviewer Barbara Walters that Tony Montana represented the best work of his career.

File:Scarface Ae1q2.jpg
Pacino as Tony Montana in Scarface (1983)

Pacino worked on his most personal project, The Local Stigmatic, a 1969 Off Broadway play by the English writer Heathcote Williams, in which he starred, which he remounted with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in a 1985 50-minute film version, which was screened in New York in March 1990. It was later released as part of the Pacino: An Actor's Vision boxset in 2007.

1985's Revolution was a commercial and critical failure, resulting in a four year hiatus from films, during which Pacino returned to the stage. He mounted workshop productions of Crystal Clear, National Anthems and other plays; he appeared in Julius Caesar in 1988 in producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Pacino remarked on his hiatus from film: "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."[7] Pacino returned to films in 1989's Sea of Love.

His greatest stage success of the decade was David Mamet's American Buffalo, for which Pacino was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.

1990s

Pacino received an Oscar nomination as Big Boy Caprice in the box office hit Dick Tracy (1990) followed by a return to arguably his most famous character, Michael Corleone, in The Godfather Part III (1990). In 1991, Al Pacino starred in Frankie and Johnny with Michelle Pfeiffer, who also co-starred with Pacino in Scarface. He would finally win an Oscar for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the depressed, irascible, and retired blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman (1992). That very year, he was also nominated for the supporting actor award for Glengarry Glen Ross, making Pacino the first male actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and to win for the lead role (as did Jamie Foxx in 2005).

File:Al-Pacino.jpg
Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III (1990)

During that same year, Pacino was offered to voice Batman villain Two-Face in the hugely successful Batman The Animated Series but turned down the role. Pacino has since turned acclaimed performances in such crime dramas as Carlito's Way (1993), Donnie Brasco (1997), the multi-Oscar nominated The Insider (1999) and Insomnia (2002).

In 1995, Pacino starred in Michael Mann's Heat, in which he and fellow film icon Robert De Niro appeared onscreen together for the first time. (Though both Pacino and De Niro starred in The Godfather Part II, they did not share any scenes. The pairing drew much attention as the two actors have long been compared). In 1996, Pacino starred in his theatrical feature Looking for Richard, and was lauded for his role as Satan in the supernatural drama The Devil's Advocate in 1997. Pacino also starred in Oliver Stone's critically acclaimed Any Given Sunday in 1999, playing the team coach. The speech he performs in the film has become known world-wide as "the Al Pacino Speech" which is used to inspire many athletes around the world.

Pacino has not received another nomination from the Academy since Scent of a Woman, but has won two Golden Globes during the last decade, the first being the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001 for lifetime achievement in motion pictures, and the second for his role in the highly praised HBO miniseries Angels in America in 2004.

Pacino has turned down several key roles in his career, including that of Han Solo in Star Wars, Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Ted Kramer in Kramer Vs. Kramer, Paul Sheldon in Misery, Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, Richard Sherman in a never-filmed remake of The Seven Year Itch, and Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman.[8][9][10] In 1996, Pacino was slated to play General Manuel Noriega in a major biographical motion picture when director Oliver Stone pulled the plug on production to focus on his movie Nixon. Pacino's greatest stage successes of the decade were in revivals of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie and Oscar Wilde's Salome.

2000s

File:PacinoIn88Minutes01.jpg
Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm in 88 Minutes (2007)

Pacino recently turned down an offer to reprise his role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather: The Game, ostensibly because his voice had changed dramatically since playing Michael in the first two Godfather films. As a result, Electronic Arts was not permitted to use Pacino's likeness or voice in the game, although his character does appear in it. It is rumored Pacino actually declined the role due to a conflict with Electronic Arts' rival, Vivendi Universal, which launched a competing game adaptation of the remake of 1983's Scarface, titled Scarface: The World is Yours. However, Pacino did not voice his character in this game for the same given reason. Pacino allowed his likeness to be used for the game, but not his voice.[11]

Pacino starred as lawyer Roy Cohn in the 2003 HBO miniseries of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America. Pacino still acts on stage and has dabbled in film directing. While The Local Stigmatic remains unreleased, his film festival-screened Chinese Coffee has earned good notices. On the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, he is only the second actor to appear on both lists: on the "heroes list" as Frank Serpico and on the "villains list" as Michael Corleone.

Pacino starred as Shylock in Michael Radford's 2004 film The Merchant of Venice.

On October 20, 2006, the American Film Institute named Pacino the recipient of the 35th AFI Life Achievement Award.[12] On November 22, 2006, the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College, Dublin awarded Pacino the Honorary Patronage of the Society.[13]

With his box office earnings relatively modest of late, Pacino looks to be gearing up with several new projects. He starred in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean's Thirteen alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Andy Garcia as the villain Willy Bank, a casino tycoon who is targeted out of revenge by Danny Ocean and his crew.

On June 19, 2007, a boxset titled Pacino: An Actor's Vision was released, containing 3 rare Al Pacino films: The Local Stigmatic (Disc 1), Looking For Richard (Disc 2) and Chinese Coffee (Disc 3), and also a documentary on Pacino's entire film career, Babbleonia (Disc 4).

Al Pacino's latest film 88 Minutes is expected to be released in 2008 in America, having already been released in various other countries in 2007. In his next scheduled release Righteous Kill, Pacino and Robert De Niro co-star as New York detectives searching for a serial killer. In Rififi, a remake of the 1955 French original based on the novel by Auguste Le Breton, Pacino plays a career thief just out of prison who finds his wife has left him; in his anger, he starts planning a heist.[14] Also Pacino is set to play surrealist Salvador Dalí in the film Dali & I: The Surreal Story.[15][16]

Personal life

On January 7 1961, Pacino and two others were seen by police circling in their vehicle in a suspicious manner, and wearing black masks and gloves. When police pulled them over, Pacino was found to be carrying a concealed weapon and was arrested. Pacino, who was 21 years old and living in New York City, stayed in jail for three days before being released when it was found that the weapons were, in fact, props from a movie set.[17][18]

While Pacino has never married, he has three children. The first, Julie Marie, (b. 1989) is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, Anton James and Olivia Rose (b. January 25, 2001), with ex-girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo, whom he was with from 1997-2001.

Over the course of his career Pacino has also been romantically involved with Debra Winger, Lyndall Hobbs and Tuesday Weld, as well as a past long-term relationship with his Godfather co-star Diane Keaton. Pacino also lived with actress Jill Clayburgh from 1970–1975. From 1977–1979, he was romantically involved with Swiss actress, Marthe Keller, during and after their filming together in Bobby Deerfield. Although he remained close friends with Keller, he then moved on with Kathleen Quinlan, fourteen years his junior, as his companion during 1979–1981.

Awards

Academy Award

BAFTA Award

Emmy Award

Golden Globe Award

Filmography

Year Title Role Notes
1969 Me, Natalie Tony Movie Debut
1971 The Panic in Needle Park Bobby
1972 The Godfather Michael Corleone Salary: $35,000
1973 Scarecrow Francis Lionel 'Lion' Delbuchi
Serpico Frank Serpico
1974 The Godfather Part II Michael Corleone Salary: $500,000+10%profit
1975 Dog Day Afternoon Sonny
1977 Bobby Deerfield Bobby Deerfield
1979 …And Justice for All Arthur Kirkland
1980 Cruising Steve Burns
1982 Author! Author! Ivan Travalian
1983 Scarface Tony Montana
1985 Revolution Tom Dobb
1989 Sea of Love Frank Keller
1990 The Local Stigmatic Graham Filmed in 1985
Dick Tracy Big Boy Caprice
The Godfather Part III Michael Corleone Salary: $5,000,000
1991 Frankie and Johnny Johnny
1992 Scent of a Woman Frank Slade
Glengarry Glen Ross Ricky Roma
1993 Carlito's Way Carlito 'Charlie' Brigante
1995 Heat Vincent Hanna
Two Bits Gitano Sabatoni
1996 Looking for Richard Director
City Hall John Pappas
1997 The Devil's Advocate John Milton
Donnie Brasco Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero
1999 Any Given Sunday Tony D'Amato
The Insider Lowell Bergman
2000 Chinese Coffee Harry Levine Also director; Filmed in 1997
2002 S1m0ne Viktor Taransky Salary: $11,000,000
Insomnia Will Dormer
People I Know Eli Wurman
2003 The Recruit Walter Burke
Angels in America Roy Cohn
Gigli Starkman
2004 The Merchant of Venice Shylock
2005 Two for the Money Walter Abrams
2007 88 Minutes Jack Gramm
Ocean's Thirteen Willie Bank
2008 Righteous Kill Detective David Fisk Post-production
2009 Dali & I: The Surreal Story Salvador Dalí Pre-production

Awards

Template:S-awards
Preceded by Academy Award for Best Actor
1992
for Scent of a Woman 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
1974
for Serpico 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
1992
for Scent of a Woman 		Succeeded by
Preceded by BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1975
for The Godfather Part II and Dog Day Afternoon 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play
1969
for Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
1977
for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Donostia Award, San Sebastian International Film Festival
1996 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Cecil B. DeMille Award
2001 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor - Miniseries or Television Movie
2003
for Angels in America 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
2004
for Angels in America 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Emmy Award - Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
2004
for Angels in America 		Succeeded by
Preceded by AFI Life Achievement Award
2007 		Succeeded by

References

  1. ^ "Al Pacino Biography (1940-)". filmreference.com. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  2. ^ "Al Pacino Biography". salpacino.com.
  3. ^ "Al Pacino Biography". Yahoo! Movies. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  4. ^ Ken Burns (January 26, 2003). "Al Pacino Interview". USA Weekend. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ "Al Pacino". Inside the Actors Studio. Season 12. Episode 1201. 2006-10-02. Bravo. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |serieslink= ignored (|series-link= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ "Scarface (1983) Box Office". boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  7. ^ Frank Lovece (September 17, 1989). "Pacino re-focuses on film career; after five-year absence, actor returns to the big screen". Los Angeles Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ "Roles turned down by Al Pacino". Retrieved 2007-12-26.
  9. ^ "Al Pacino Biography". imdb.com. Retrieved 2007-12-26.
  10. ^ "Goodfellas (1990)– Trivia". Retrieved 2007-12-26.
  11. ^ Robert Howarth (April 21, 2005). "Pacino Lends Likeness, Not Voice, To Scarface Game". {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ "AFI Lifetime Achievement Award: Al Pacino". Al Pacino is an icon of American film. He has created some of the great characters in the movies– from Michael Corleone to Tony Montana to Roy Cohn. His career inspires audiences and artists alike, with each new performance a master class for a generation of actors to follow. AFI is proud to present him with its 35th Life Achievement Award.
  13. ^ "Award Winning Actor, Al Pacino Visits Trinity College". Trinity College Dublin. November 22, 2006. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  14. ^ "Wippit Featured Artists: Al Pacino". wippit.com. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  15. ^ "Pacino to play Dalí". Empire.com. 19 January 2007. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ Borys Kit (January 19, 2007). "Surreal life: Pacino plays Dali in biopic". The Hollywood Reporter. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ http://www.vinylzart.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=3323&category_id=22
  18. ^ http://www.mugshots.org/hollywood/al-pacino.htm


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