Al Pacino’s portrayal of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972) made the actor one of the most recognizable characters in American popular culture. He was 32 years old and I was 12. More than a half-century later, Pacino published a memoir, Sonny Boy (2024) that documents an incredible legacy of stage and screen work.
Even after being cast as Michael Corleone, there was a moment during the filming when Director Francis Ford Coppola called Pacino in to tell him that, “You’re not cutting it.” Pacino expected to be fired. It was only after directing one of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history that Coppola was assured he had something special in Pacino. I’ll tell you only that this scene had something to do with a restaurant, a gun, and a toilet.
It would be easy enough to pinpoint that scene as the turning point in Pacino’s life and on some level it was; Al Pacino became famous and there is definitely a story before The Godfather that is clearly distinguishable from after The Godfather.
However, there is a through-line to this story that has nothing to do with fame and fortune. It begins in 1965. A 25 year-old Al Pacino is performing in a three-character play directed by Pacino’s mentor, Charlie Laughton: The Creditors written by August Strindberg. Laughton taught classes at The Actors Gallery which Pacino describes as “a playhouse in Soho, just a little room up a flight of stairs that sat maybe twenty-five or thirty people.”
Even though his stage life began in his teens, this was one of the first times Pacino had shared the stage, he recalls, “with other experienced actors. They were giving great performances, and I was part of it…. And then one night it was revealed to me, just like that, it happened. The power of expression was revealed to me….I wasn’t searching for it… Words are coming out, and they’re the words of Strindberg, but I’m saying them as though they’re mine… I left the familiar. I became part of something larger… Yes, this is it. It’s right there and I can reach out and touch it.”
After this moment, “I knew I didn’t have to worry after that. I eat, I don’t eat. I make money, I don’t make money. I’m famous, I’m not famous. It didn’t mean anything anymore.”
He adds that “A door was opening, not to a career, not to success or fortune, but to the living spirit of energy. I had been given this insight into myself, and there was nothing else I could do but say: I want to do this forever.”
This personal insight, this personal turning point, this personal revelation doesn’t change the fact that, for the rest of us, it was The Godfather that brought Al Pacino into our cultural lives. And in this lies a remarkable and unlikely story… that is, unless a part of you believes in fate. So, how did Al Pacino come to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola? The answer resides within the early years of Pacino’s life, stories he tells with a warm and grateful heart.
“As a kid, it was the relationships with my friends on the street that sustained me and gave me hope,” Pacino writes, recalling his life at age 10 or so, 1950 or so. “I ran with a crew that included my three best friends, Cliff, Bruce, and Petey. Every day was a fresh adventure.” As a self-proclaimed juvenile delinquent in the South Bronx, Pacino was an unlikely candidate for the acclaim that would follow him his entire life. Despite, and likely because of, this tendency towards reckless behavior, it is clear that the emotional attachments of these boys were sincere and enduring. Although, it was only Sonny Boy that would live a full life as Cliff, Bruce, and Petey succumbed to the pathologies of the street.
Sonny Boy was the nickname given him by his grandmother who was a powerful, yet gentle, stabilizing force in his life. It was this presence that saved Pacino from the fate of his dear friends.
“In hindsight,” he reflects, “I realize I might have had more love from my family than the other three did. I think that might have made all the difference. I made it out alive, and they didn’t.”
Pacino’s fascination with the movies set him apart as well. And, because his adult family was often working low-paying jobs to pay the rent, he writes, “I would have nothing but time to think about the movie I had last seen. I’d go through the characters in my head, and I would bring them to life, one by one, in the apartment. I learned at an early age to make friends with my imagination.”
By junior high school, a teacher recognized Pacino’s gift and took the time to visit his family and encourage them to send him to New York’s High School of Performing Arts, which he attended until age 16. To get by, Pacino engaged in several odd jobs; many of which were on the margins of theater life. He delivered Show Business newspapers out of a red wagon. He ushered in a movie theater. He helped set up stage sets and in one case, his bed for a time was the stage.
With this proximity to the acting life, it was at seventeen that Pacino met Charlie Laughton who recognized Pacino’s gift. Attending classes and putting on productions at the Actors Gallery gave Pacino the exposure he needed, along with a boatload of luck/fate, to bring him into contact with a collection of inspiring and soon-to-be influential show business people. Faye Dunaway, fresh off performing in Bonnie and Clyde with Warren Beatty, came backstage after seeing his performance. She introduced her manager, Marty Bregman, who, along with Laughton, would serve as two of three lifelong mentors and supporters to Al Pacino and his career. And, during a 1969 performance of Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, in which Pacino won a Tony Award, Francis Ford Coppola was in the audience.
Not everyone liked what they saw but the world was changing. During an audition, an old and influential theater director asked Pacino, “Who do you think you are?… Who gave you the right to do – things like that?” Charlie Laughton was there too, as Pacino remembers, “squeezing my arm and whispering, ‘You were great.’”
Decades later, with Charlie near death, Pacino asked him if he remembered the old director that had given him such a hard time. “Charlie said, ‘Yeah, I remember that day. I thought about it too.’ ‘What do you think happened there? What was that about, really?’ And Charlie said, ‘I think he saw the future.’”
Pacino’s post-Godfather stories bolster his claim that he was to be an actor whether fame and fortune followed or not. This is why he was so grateful for his mentors because Pacino had no real interest in managing all the new money or dealing with the business side of things.
“I knew acting would be my profession,” he writes, “but somehow the whole business eluded me and my lifestyle… I was a theater person.”
Pacino had a curious relationship with fame; and after the release of The Godfather, there was no escaping it. “One day I was standing at a curb, waiting for the light to change, and this pretty redhead was standing there with me. I looked at her. She looked at me. I said, ‘Hi.’ She said, ‘Hi, Michael.’ And I just went Whoa. Oh my God. I am not safe. Anonymity, sweet pea, the light of my life, my survival tool – that’s gone now. You don’t appreciate it until you lose it.”
“Perhaps,” he pondered, “fame was going to be more trouble than it was worth. I hated to think what would happen if I ended up attaining more of it. It terrified me… sorta.”
The fortune he left up to others and this turned out badly. On two occasions during his career, he found himself in serious financial trouble. The first occurred after he had taken a couple years off to get his head straight and do what he truly loved, which was being on the stage in New York instead of LA, which suited him as well. The solution was to simply start making movies again; he was still in his prime.
The second financial crisis resulted in his accountant going to prison and by this time Pacino was in his seventies. To make things right, he took on some roles just for the money; violating his long-standing credo to take on only those characters that he felt he could interpret with passion. As he reflects sadly, “I was broke. I had fifty million dollars, and then I had nothing.” He adds that, “I also ended up doing some really bad films that will go unmentioned, just for the cash, when my funds got low enough.”
“I never went into doing acting for money. I went broke. Then I got into it. You know I’m a man who has more Golden Raspberry nominations than Oscars.”*
Despite this moment of financial reality, Pacino’s story is replete with roles he did not take because he was not inspired. He was offered the role of Han Solo in Star Wars and Billy the Kid in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He writes of directors that, “I turned down Ingmar Bergman. I turned down Bernardo Bertolucci. Fellini. Pontecorvo. Can you imagine saying no to these people? More than anything in my heart, I wanted to work with them. I didn’t turn them down—I just couldn’t be in the movies they were making because I didn’t relate to the part.”
Refusing roles and also offering creative input for the roles he did accept gave Pacino a reputation for being difficult. He also did not attend the Oscar ceremony for his nomination for Supporting Actor in The Godfather. Rumors spread that he was miffed because he didn’t get a Best Actor nomination instead, ostensibly pitting him against Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Vito Corleone in the same film. The truth is that the introverted actor was simply terrified to attend. As to the Hollywood rumor mill, he adds, “Assumptions spread, then those assumptions turn into opinions and those opinions turn into stone and you can’t ever penetrate or change them. That’s a mouthful, but I believe that’s what’s going on in our world. Fabrications and rumors turn into facts.” It was refreshing to discover that this commentary—I believe that’s what’s going on in our world—is the only hint that Pacino has some strong views about the state of American affairs in the 2020s.
Sonny Boy is not your typical Hollywood memoir. If Pacino has anything negative to say about anyone, he names no names and attributes the behavior to a culture that thrives upon the relentless and dirt-seeking scrutiny of celebrities. Indeed, Pacino refers regularly to the toll that fame takes upon the famous.
My original intention was to share some Al Pacino moments that you may have missed; that most of us know Pacino in The Godfather movies, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Serpico (1973), even Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and Scent of a Woman (1992), among others. More recently you may have seen Danny Collins (2015) and The Irishman (2019). These are all classic movies but they account for only a fraction of his work on the stage and the screen.
I mentioned I was 12 when The Godfather was released in 1972. Al Pacino has been on our cultural radar my entire adult life. With little exception he has been performing constantly for more than fifty years and with most of the seriously famous and successful actors of our day. Trying to catalogue or comment on this massive body of work here, well… that’s why we have Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Pacino_on_stage_and_screen.
In his eighties now, Al Pacino continues to work. In the past five years he has contributed to eight different films and from 2020-2023 he starred as Meyer Offerman in 18 episodes of Hunters on Amazon Prime.
As many do at his stage of life, Pacino also ponders his own mortality. In a rare interview, Pacino is asked, “What do you think God will say at the pearly gates?” He replies not as a movie star but as an actor, “I hope He says rehearsal starts tomorrow at three p.m.”
*A hilarious and un-Pacino minute from Jack and Jill (2011)
