Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacinois an American actor of stage and screen, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Pacino has had a career spanning fifty years, during which time he has received numerous accolades and honors both competitive and honorary, among them an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, four Golden Globe Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the National Medal of Arts. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth25 April 1940
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.
The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers.
I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.
Certainly the movies were always in the air for me. I come from the era when actors thought it was a big deal to be in the movies.
I wouldn't be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast. Except if something was maybe a play on television or some great television script.
I want to be interesting in an interview just as much as I want to do well in a part.
I turned down a lot of films before I made my first one. I knew that it was time for me to get into movies.
A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.
I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn't want to do movies that much. I found they took a lot out of you and they were exhausting for me in a lot of ways.
When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.
You do get very tired sometimes, when you're sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted.
Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.