Al Pacino

Alfredo James Pacino (/pəˈtʃiːnoʊ/ pə-CHEE-noh; Italian: [paˈtʃiːno]; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. He has received many accolades including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, achieving the Triple Crown of Acting. He has also received four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016.

A method actor, Pacino studied at HB Studio and the Actors Studio, where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg. Pacino went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Scent of a Woman (1992). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979), Dick Tracy (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and The Irishman (2019). His other notable roles include The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Scarecrow (1973), Cruising (1980), Scarface (1983), The Godfather Part III (1990), Carlito's Way (1993), Heat (1995), Donnie Brasco, The Devil's Advocate (both 1997), The Insider, Any Given Sunday (both 1999), Insomnia (2002), Ocean's Thirteen (2007), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and House of Gucci (2021).

On television, Pacino has acted in multiple productions for HBO, including Angels in America (2003) and the Jack Kevorkian biopic You Don't Know Jack (2010), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for each. Pacino starred in the Amazon Prime Video series Hunters (2020–23). He has also had an extensive career on stage. He is a two-time Tony Award winner, winning Best Featured Actor in a Play in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969) and Best Actor in a Play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977).

Pacino made his directorial debut with the documentary Looking for Richard (1996). He has played the lead role on stage in 1977. He has also acted as Shylock in a 2004 feature film adaptation and 2010 stage production of The Merchant of Venice. Pacino directed and starred in Chinese Coffee (2000), Wilde Salomé (2011), and Salomé (2013). Since 1994, he has been the joint president of the Actors Studio.

Alfredo James Pacino was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on April 25, 1940, the only child of Sicilian Italian-American parents Rose (née Gerardi) and Salvatore Pacino. His father had immigrated from San Fratello. His parents divorced when he was two years old. His mother took him to the South Bronx and they lived with her parents, Kate and James Gerardi. They had immigrated from Corleone when young. Pacino's father moved to California to work as an insurance salesman and restaurateur in Covina, California.

In his teenage years, Pacino was known as "Sonny" to his friends. He had ambitions to become a baseball player and was also nicknamed "The Actor". He attended Herman Ridder Junior High School, but soon dropped out of most of his classes except for English. He subsequently attended the High School of Performing Arts, after gaining admission by audition. His mother disagreed with his decision and, after an argument, he left home. To finance his acting studies, Pacino took low-paying jobs as a messenger, busboy, janitor, and postal clerk, as well as once working in the mailroom for Commentary.

Pacino began smoking and drinking at age nine, and used marijuana casually at age 13, but he abstained from hard drugs. His two closest friends died from drug abuse at the ages of 19 and 30. Growing up in the South Bronx, Pacino got into occasional fights and was considered something of a troublemaker at school. He acted in basement plays in New York's theatrical underground, but was rejected as a teenager by the Actors Studio. Instead, Pacino joined the HB Studio, where he met acting teacher Charlie Laughton, who became his mentor and best friend. In this period, he was often unemployed or homeless, and sometimes slept on the street, in theaters, or at a friend's home.

In 1962, Pacino's mother died at the age of 43. The following year, his maternal grandfather also died. Pacino recalled it as the lowest point of his life and said, "I was 22 and the two most influential people in my life had gone, so that sent me into a tailspin."

After four years at HB Studio, Pacino successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio. The Actors Studio is a membership organization of professional actors, theater directors, and playwrights in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Pacino studied "method acting" under acting coach Lee Strasberg, who appeared with Pacino in the films The Godfather Part II and in ...And Justice for All.

During later interviews, he spoke about Strasberg and the Studio's effect on his career. "The Actors Studio meant so much to me in my life. Lee Strasberg hasn't been given the credit he deserves ... Next to Charlie, it sort of launched me. It really did. That was a remarkable turning point in my life. It was directly responsible for getting me to quit all those jobs and just stay acting." In another interview he added, "It was exciting to work for him [Lee Strasberg] because he was so interesting when he talked about a scene or talked about people. One would just want to hear him talk, because things he would say, you'd never heard before ... He had such a great understanding ... he loved actors so much."

In 2000, Pacino was selected as co-president of the Actors Studio, along with Ellen Burstyn and Harvey Keitel.

In 1967, Pacino spent a season at the Charles Playhouse in Boston, performing in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! (his first major paycheck: US$125 a week); and in Jean-Claude Van Itallie's America Hurrah. He met actress Jill Clayburgh on this play. They had a five-year romance and moved back to New York City. In 1968, Pacino starred in Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx at the Astor Place Theatre, playing Murph, a street punk. The play opened January 17, 1968, and ran for 177 performances; it was staged in a double bill with Horovitz's It's Called the Sugar Plum, starring Clayburgh. Pacino won an Obie Award for Best Actor for his role, with John Cazale winning for Best Supporting Actor and Horowitz for Best New Play. Martin Bregman saw the play and became Pacino's manager, a partnership that became fruitful in the years to come, as Bregman encouraged Pacino to do The Godfather, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon. About his stage career, Pacino said, "Martin Bregman discovered me ... I was 26, 25 ... he discovered me and became my manager. And that's why I'm here. I owe it to Marty, I really do".

Pacino took the production of The Indian Wants the Bronx to Italy for a performance at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. It was Pacino's first journey to Italy; he later recalled that "performing for an Italian audience was a marvelous experience". Pacino and Clayburgh were cast in "Deadly Circle of Violence", an episode of the ABC television series NYPD, premiering November 12, 1968. Clayburgh at the time was also appearing on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, playing the role of Grace Bolton. Her father would send the couple money each month to help with finances.

On February 25, 1969, Pacino made his Broadway debut in Don Petersen's Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? at the Belasco Theater, produced by A&P Heir Huntington Hartford. It closed after 39 performances on March 29, 1969, but Pacino received rave reviews and won the Tony Award on April 20, 1969. Pacino continued performing onstage in the 1970s, winning a second Tony Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and performing the title role in Richard III. In the 1980s, Pacino again achieved critical success on stage while appearing in David Mamet's American Buffalo, for which Pacino was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Since 1990, Pacino's stage work has included revivals of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie, Oscar Wilde's Salome and in 2005 Lyle Kessler's Orphans. Pacino found acting enjoyable and realized he had a gift for it while studying at The Actors Studio. However, his early work was not financially rewarding. After his success on stage, Pacino made his film debut in 1969 with a brief appearance in Me, Natalie, an independent film starring Patty Duke. In 1970, Pacino signed with the talent agency Creative Management Associates (CMA). Pacino made his feature film debut portraying a heroin addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971).

Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Michael Corleone in what became a blockbuster Mafia film, The Godfather (1972). Although Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and the little-known Robert De Niro tried out for the part, Coppola selected Pacino, to the dismay of studio executives who wanted someone better known. Pacino's performance earned him an Academy Award nomination, and offered a prime example of his early acting style, described by Halliwell's Film Guide as "intense" and "tightly clenched". Pacino boycotted the Academy Award ceremony, insulted at being nominated for the Supporting Acting award, as he noted that he had more screen time than co-star and Best Actor winner Marlon Brando—who also boycotted the awards, but for unrelated reasons. In 1973, Pacino co-starred in Scarecrow with Gene Hackman, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year, Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor after starring in Serpico, based on the true story of New York City policeman Frank Serpico, who went undercover to expose the corruption of fellow officers. In 1974, Pacino reprised his role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II, which was the first sequel to win the Best Picture Oscar; Pacino was nominated a third time for an Oscar, this second nomination for the Corleone role being in the lead category. Newsweek has described his performance in The Godfather Part II as "arguably cinema's greatest portrayal of the hardening of a heart".