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Al Pacino
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Al Pacino

American actor
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Also known as: Alfredo James Pacino
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Last Updated: Jan 27, 2024 • Article History
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Al Pacino (born April 25, 1940, New York, New York, U.S.) American actor best known for his intense, explosive acting style.

Al Pacino in The Insider

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Category: Arts & Culture
In full: Alfredo James PacinoBorn: April 25, 1940, New York, New York, U.S. (age 83)Awards And Honors: Tony Awards National Medal of Arts (2011) Cecil B. DeMille Award (2001) Academy Award (1993): Actor in a Leading Role Cecil B. DeMille Award (2001) Emmy Award (2010): Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie Emmy Award (2004): Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie Golden Globe Award (2011): Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Golden Globe Award (2004): Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television Golden Globe Award (1993): Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama Golden Globe Award (1974): Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama Tony Award (1977): Best Actor in a Play Tony Award (1969): Best Featured Actor in a Play(Show more)
Notable Works: “Chinese Coffee” “Looking for Richard”

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Early career

After growing up in East Harlem and the Bronx, Pacino moved at age 19 to Greenwich Village, where he studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio and appeared in many Off-Broadway and out-of-town productions, including Hello, Out There (1963) and Why Is a Crooked Letter (1966). He took further acting lessons from Lee Strasberg and played a small part in the film Me, Natalie in 1969. The same year, he made his Broadway debut and won a Tony Award for his performance in the play Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? Pacino’s first leading role in a film came with The Panic in Needle Park (1971), a grim tale of heroin addiction that became something of a cult classic.
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Stardom: The Godfather, Serpico, and Scarface

Dog Day AfternoonSidney Lumet (centre) and Al Pacino (right) during the filming of Dog Day Afternoon (1975).(more)
Director Francis Ford Coppola cast Pacino in the film that would make him a star, The Godfather (1972). The saga of a family of gangsters and their fight to maintain power in changing times, The Godfather was a wildly popular film that won the Academy Award for best picture and earned Pacino numerous accolades—including his first of many Oscar nominations—for his intense performance as Michael Corleone, a gangster’s son who reluctantly takes over the “family business.” Pacino solidified his standing as one of Hollywood’s most dynamic stars in his next few films. In Scarecrow (1973), he teamed with Gene Hackman in a bittersweet story about two transients, and his roles in Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) displayed Pacino’s characteristic screen qualities of brooding seriousness and explosive rage. He also repeated the role of Michael Corleone for Coppola’s The Godfather, Part II (1974), a film that, like its predecessor, won the best picture Oscar.
Pacino’s next few films did not fare as well. Bobby Deerfield (1977) was notable as his first box-office failure since he had become a star. The dark comedy …And Justice for All (1979) featured some of Pacino’s most memorable scenes, but Cruising (1980) and the light comedy Author! Author! (1982) were critical and popular disasters.
Al Pacino in ScarfaceAl Pacino in Scarface (1983), directed by Brian De Palma.
Al Pacino in ScarfaceAl Pacino in Scarface (1983), directed by Brian De Palma.
ScarfaceAl Pacino (right) and Steven Bauer in Scarface (1983), directed by Brian De Palma.(more)
In Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983), Pacino returned to the kind of combustible, high-intensity role that had made him famous. As gangster Tony Montana, Pacino gave a highly charged, unrestrained performance that, although loved by some and deplored by others, ranks among his most unforgettable. His next film, Revolution (1985), was an expensive flop, and Pacino did not appear in another film for four years.

Academy Award and later films

Scent of a WomanAl Pacino and Gabrielle Anwar in Scent of a Woman.

Sea of Love (1989), his biggest hit in years, reestablished Pacino as a major film star. In 1990 he reprised the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III and gave a hilarious portrayal of grotesque gangster Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy. Frankie and Johnny (1991) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), both adaptations of plays, continued his string of well-received films, and he won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of a bitter blind man in Scent of a Woman (1992). Pacino’s other notable films of the 1990s included Carlito’s Way (1993); Heat (1995), a crime drama in which he played a detective hunting a thief (Robert De Niro); Donnie Brasco (1997), in which he starred as a low-level mobster who unknowingly befriends an FBI agent (Johnny Depp); and Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday (1999). Also in 1999 Pacino appeared opposite Russell Crowe in The Insider; based on real-life events, it examines tobacco companies and their efforts to conceal the dangerous side effects of cigarettes.

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Pacino’s prolific acting career continued into the 21st century. In 2002 he starred with Robin Williams in the thriller Insomnia, and he later appeared in Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), the final installment of a popular comedy trilogy that featured George Clooney and Brad Pitt. After skewering his public persona with a role as himself in the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill (2011), Pacino played an aging gangster in Stand Up Guys (2012). He evinced the isolation of a small-town locksmith in Manglehorn (2014) and the late-life epiphany of a rock star in Danny Collins (2015). After a series of roles in unremarkable movies, Pacino joined a cast of colourful characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019). He then costarred with De Niro in The Irishman (2019), his first film with director Martin Scorsese. In the mob drama, which received a theatrical release before airing on Netflix, Pacino played labour leader Jimmy Hoffa, whose disappearance in 1975 caused much speculation. For his performance, Pacino earned his 10th Oscar nomination. In 2021 he appeared as a lawyer in American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally, which was based on the true story of Mildred Gillars, a radio propagandist for the Nazi government during World War II. That year Pacino was also cast in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, which centres on the true story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, who headed his family’s luxury fashion brand.

TV and stage work

In between his big-screen work, Pacino appeared in several television productions for HBO. For his role as homophobic lawyer Roy Cohn in Angels in America (2003), an adaptation of Tony Kushner’s two-part play about AIDS in the 1980s, he won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. His performance as Jack Kevorkian, a doctor who assisted in the suicide of terminally ill patients, in the movie You Don’t Know Jack (2010) earned him the same awards. He later starred as another controversial figure in David Mamet’s Phil Spector (2013), which was set during the embattled record producer’s first trial for murder. In Paterno (2018) Pacino played legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, whose reputation was tarnished by a sex-abuse scandal that occurred during his tenure. In the Amazon series Hunters (2020–23), he portrayed a Holocaust survivor who leads a group of people searching for Nazis in the 1970s.

Pacino frequently returned to the stage throughout his career, notably winning a Tony Award for his leading role in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977). He also starred in such plays as William Shakespeare’s Richard III (1973 and 1979), Julius Caesar (1988), and The Merchant of Venice (2010); Mamet’s American Buffalo (1980, 1981, and 1983) and Glengarry Glen Ross (2012); and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1992, 2003, and 2006). In 1992 Pacino originated the role of Harry Levine, a washed-up writer who is depressed about his lack of success, in the Broadway drama Chinese Coffee; he later directed and starred in a 2000 film adaptation. He also directed the documentary films Looking for Richard (1996) and Wilde Salomé (2011), which offered behind-the-scenes looks at two of his stage productions.
In 2001 Pacino received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement). His other awards included the National Medal of Arts (2011) and a Kennedy Center Honor (2016).
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
American Buffalo
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American Buffalo

play by Mamet
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American Buffalo, two-act play by David Mamet, produced in 1975 and published in 1976. With sparse action and vivid dialogue, it examines mistrust and dishonesty among the conspirators in an aborted burglary.
Don Dubrow, the owner of a junk shop where the action takes place, decides to steal a customer’s coin collection when he feels that he has been bested in a transaction involving a buffalo nickel. He enlists the help of a young junkie named Bobby but is later convinced by a manipulative friend that Bobby is incompetent. Unable to trust either, Don invites a third person to join him. Bobby becomes a scapegoat as the burglary plot unravels and tensions build into suspicion, anger, and violence.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.
The Godfather
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The Godfather

film by Coppola [1972]
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Written by

Pat Bauer
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Last Updated: Jan 9, 2024 • Article History
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The Godfather, American gangster epic film, released in 1972, that was adapted from the 1969 best-selling novel by Mario Puzo and has been regarded as a masterpiece since its release. Its creative cinematography, haunting score, and unforgettable performances by such actors as Marlon Brando and Al Pacino made the multigenerational saga an enduring cultural touchstone.

The Godfather

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Category: Arts & Culture
Awards And Honors: Academy Award (1973)

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(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
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The Godfather is set in the 1940s and takes place entirely within the world of the Corleones, a fictional New York Mafia family. It opens inside the dark office of the family patriarch, Don Vito Corleone (also known as the Godfather and played by Brando), on the wedding day of his daughter, Connie (Talia Shire). Vito’s youngest son, Michael (Pacino), who has distanced himself from the family business, attends the festivities with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton).
A few months later, Vito is nearly killed by gunmen sent by a rival family, and Michael saves him from another attempt while he is recovering in the hospital. Michael then takes revenge, killing a corrupt police captain as well as the man who ordered the hit on Vito, after which he flees to Sicily as a gang war breaks out. Vito’s eldest son, Sonny (James Caan), is gunned down, and the violence eventually reaches Michael when his Sicilian wife is killed during an attempt on his life.

Michael returns home and marries Kay, and Vito makes peace with the rival families. Michael succeeds his father as don, and, after bringing prosperity to the family, he launches a campaign to systematically wipe out all those who had ever attacked the Corleones.
filming of The GodfatherFrancis Ford Coppola (right) directing Marlon Brando (left) in The Godfather (1972).

Director and cowriter Francis Ford Coppola shared an Academy Award for the screenplay that he and Puzo wrote. Dialogue from the movie—especially the line “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”—became common parlance, and scenes from the film were frequently quoted in other movies and TV shows. Nino Rota’s score was nominated for an Academy Award but was removed from the list after it was learned that portions of the music were originally composed for the 1958 Italian film Fortunella.

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The Godfather made a star of Robert Duvall, who played the family consigliere, and it also revitalized Brando’s career. Brando, however, refused the Oscar that he won for his performance in order to protest the treatment of Native Americans by the film industry. Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II, a sequel and companion piece to The Godfather, was released in 1974, and it became the first sequel to win an Academy Award for best picture.
The Godfather was in the second group of films selected for the National Film Registry (1990) and was named in 2002 as one of the National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films.