April 25, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Tough guy actor Al Pacino, who made his name in The Godfather movies, is 70
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, April 25, Graphic News:  For an Italian American whose maternal grandparents came from Corleone in Sicily, Al Pacino was practically born to play the mafia heir of the same name and create one of the abiding villains of cinematic history.
 
Yet when director Francis Ford Coppola brought the relatively unknown actor to the set of what would become his hit 1972 movie, Pacino was far from popular with the rest of the crew. The role of Michael Corleone, ruthless youngest son of Cosa Nostra patriarch, Don Vito -- immortalised by screen heavyweight Marlon Brando -- had been fiercely fought over by the leading men of the day. Robert Redford and Ryan O'Neal were the names Paramount studio bosses had in mind; Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman were among those who auditioned. Pacino, who had only had two minor screen appearances to his credit, was not considered big box office and, at only five foot six, was also regarded as physically wrong for the part. But Coppola stood his ground and Pacino, who had grown up fatherless in the Bronx, gave an Oscar-nominated performance in what is still regarded as one of the best films ever made.
 
Pacino's career had had a rocky start. Born into an immigrant family in the East Harlem area of New York, he was a failure at school and left home at 17, having fallen out with his mother, Rose. Taking a variety of low-paid jobs and often sleeping rough, Pacino slowly made his way in the theatre, sometimes having to borrow the bus fare to auditions. He took acting classes, appeared in basement plays -- the theatrical underground -- and off-Broadway productions, mainly in supporting roles and, in 1962, endured his mother's premature death at the age of 42. Four years later he met the legendary acting coach, Lee Strasberg, at the Actors Studio in New York. Strasberg's pioneering Method approach was to influence many of Pacino's generation and helped the aspiring Alfredo break through in a play called The Indian Wants the Bronx.
 
His gritty, realistic stage performances led naturally to tough, true-life roles on screen. His early films included the part of a heroin addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971), and after The Godfather came the tale of an undercover cop, exposing corruption in his own police force, in Serpico (1973) and the violent, poignant story of a bungling bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon (1975), both of which were based on real events. He reprised his role as Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974), by now commanding a fee of half a milllion dollars. 
 
In the decades that followed, Pacino won many accolades for his stage performances in productions of Shakespeare, Brecht and David Mamet's American Buffalo, while his most successful movies built on his reputation for intense, brooding portrayals, among them the 1983 drug drama, Scarface, which has achieved film cult status, and the 1989 thriller, Sea of Love. It was the relatively romantic Scent of a Woman (1992), in which he played a blind Vietnam veteran, which finally won Pacino an Oscar for Best Actor. "It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won," he later admitted. "There was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics. It's like you've won a race and everybody knows you won. It's a wonderful feeling, a complete feeling."
 
A lifelong bachelor, Pacino was involved with his Godfather co-star, Diane Keaton, had a daughter with his one-time acting coach, Jan Tarrant, and fathered twins, Anton and Olivia, in 2001 with his then partner, actress Beverly D'Angelo, before the couple separated, acrimoniously, the following year.
/ENDS