TAfter reaching the age of 80, most actors who have won several Oscars and Tony awards think about writing their memoirs. It is not the case of Al Pacino. He does not believe that one day he will write a book about his life and his professional career, for the simple reason that he does not remember very well what he did in the seventies. A decade during which he was nominated for an Oscar five times – for the first two films in the saga The Godfatherby serpico, dog afternoon Y Justice for all– and during which he played, in turn, the Shakespearean Richard III on Broadway. But for the actor, the 1970s are now a blur in his memory, the product of habitual drug and alcohol use. «In the sixties I felt fine, but in the seventies I felt out of place; I became extremely famous overnight », he says.
«In those years, the actors were all handsome… until, suddenly, I appeared. I never had ambitions to become a movie star. It was not my goal in life, the thing caught me completely off guard, and I think that partly explains why that was such a difficult decade for me. I was a bit wild and uncontrolled, and I led a very crazy life, so the memory I have of that time … ».
Laugh. “I prefer to leave it there. As you can see, I am much better now. Which just goes to show that it’s possible to survive that sort of thing. I’m not going to write a book, but if one day I change my mind, maybe you can help me with the chapter dedicated to the seventies». More laughs.
“If mobile phones had existed in the seventies, there would be very disturbing photos of me”
During that intense past, he had to reconcile work, courtships and excesses with visits to his twin children, now 21 years old, Anton and Olivia, who grew up in Los Angeles with their mother, actress Beverly D’Angelo. “Her mother and I have always lived in her house, which is a factor to consider,” he says. The children lived in his house and came to see me at mine, so they were always carrying things from one place to another, although over the years they have gotten used to it. Among other things, because I have been constantly by his side, since the day of his birth.
Pacino has another 32-year-old daughter, Julie, from his relationship with drama teacher Jan Tarrant. As she explains, Julia is also an actress «and she does what she really likes, in a vocational way and with real passion». Dressed in a dark, wrinkled suit, with the tails of his shirt over his pants and a scarf around his neck, the actor sips coffee from a plastic cup. Early in his professional career, Pacino worked as a nightclub comedian and it’s clear he still enjoys telling funny stories. Many of the anecdotes originate from his experience in the world of theater.
He made his Broadway debut in 1969 with the play Does a tiger wear a necklace?, for which he won his first Tony Award. Unlike many actors coming from the theater who have eventually become movie stars and turned their backs on the stage, Pacino has continued to work in the theater on a regular basis.
“I don’t remember much of what happened in the seventies. She led a very crazy life. Let’s leave it there. But I’m proof that you can survive that kind of thing.”
“I still have the typical actor nightmares,” he says. And some have come true. “I remember I was performing a Shakespeare play. At one point I said, ‘Sir, I just brought you this and that,’ and kept hitting you with the dialogue, until I realized that my words were from another Shakespeare play. The representation was Hamletbut I was letting out phrases of Julius Caesar! ‘Now how do I get out of this?’ I wondered. He was scared to death».
“I remember once, when I was still relatively young, our company was putting on eight Shakespeare performances a week. After a few days, I was exhausted. There was a moment when I had to say a long paragraph on stage and suddenly I thought: ‘I’m saying everything twice. I’m repeating myself, because I’ve said this before. What is going on with me? The audience is going to start getting up and walking away when they realize that the bum on stage is saying it all twice.’ Actually it wasn’t like that. What happened was that a couple of hours before he had released the same tirade ».
Pacino has never been married. His various partners have included actresses Jill Clayburgh, Diane Keaton, Marthe Keller, Kathleen Quinlan, Debra Winger and Penelope Ann Miller. He dated Lucila Solá (or Polak, his real surname), an actress and model 40 years his junior, for ten years. They broke up in 2018 and he found new love in Israeli model Meital Dohan, also quite a bit younger than Pacino. Nor did the relationship prosper. The latest conquest (so far) is Noor Alfallah, a 28-year-old Kuwaiti film producer, 54 years younger than the actor.
childhood and future
Born in the run-down New York neighborhood of East Harlem, he had a “complicated” childhood. The adjective is yours. His father, Salvatore, a bricklayer by profession, left the family two years after the birth of the actor. Pacino grew up with his mother, Rose, and his grandparents. Money was tight in the family home, and Pacino left home at age 16 to live in bohemian Greenwich Village, where he worked as an usher in a movie theater and joined a theatrical group. “The theater world became my family for many years… In fact, it’s still my family,” he notes.
“People don’t know that I started out doing stand-up comedy. In fact, he doesn’t believe it when I tell him. But I see myself like that, doing comedy»
After training at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio and playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather in 1972, Pacino has been nominated for an Oscar eight times. He finally got the award in 1992, for essence of woman. He is a two-time Tony Award winner and has become an iconic and enduring figure on stage and screen. He has created such memorable characters as Serpico, Scarface, Big Boy Caprice in dick tracy and the three to four gangster Lefty, in Donnie Brasco. Along with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, he helped break the traditional Hollywood convention that all leading men had to be over six feet tall and possess a manly good looks. It has taken him some time, but he has finally gotten used to fame and success.
“Years ago, my great friend and mentor Charles Laughton brought something to my attention: ‘Al, it still amazes you that strangers come up to you when you’re walking down the street.’ It was a fact. I was surprised, I did not see the reason why they stopped me in the middle of the street. But as the great Lee Strasberg told me on another occasion: ‘My dear, one has to get used to the idea’». Pacino is still in the gap. Among his latest films as an actor (he has also directed) stand out the Irish (for which he was nominated for an Oscar) and the gucci house. “I think more and more over the years, and I’ve gotten to a point where I just want to work on roles that interest me personally,” she says.
Yse has embarked on a promising adventure, he is the producer of Modigliani, where Jonnhy Depp makes his directorial debut. Pacino follows.
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Al Pacino: «They were all handsome boys… and then I came» | XLWeekly