Al Pacino will turn 83 on April 25. An anniversary that he will celebrate on the stage of the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The actor will tell his life, his films, his plays, in the company of Léa Salamé. A one-on-one in English, without translation. This is not the first time that he has engaged in this kind of self-portrait during an exceptional meeting with the public, revealing a little more his personality and his work as an actor.
Already in 2018, he had made the show two evenings in a row at the Théâtre de Paris and had promised: “I will come back. During this first meeting, he had evoked his childhood in the Bronx, his passion for Shakespeare with Richard III (he made a fascinating documentary film, Looking for Richard, dissecting all the nuances of his game), Jules César and Le Merchant of Venice. To this taste for the great classics is added that for more modern authors such as Oscar Wilde, with Salomé, and David Mamet, of which he played two plays on Broadway, Glengarry Glen Ross and China Doll.
How does one become Al Pacino, after making his theatrical debut and gaining attention with a starring role in Jerry Schatzberg’s Panic in Needle Park in 1971? The actor of cult characters like Serpico, Roy Cohn and Jimmy Hoffa, the Michael Corleone of The Godfather and the Tony Montana of Scarface explains it, while cultivating the mystery and multiplying the anecdotes. Thus, about Star Wars, he admits that his teacher and mentor Charles Laughton and himself had not understood the story of George Lucas, preferring to decline and thus give way to Harrison Ford, of which he adds jokingly “He owes me his career!” »
Among his encounters, that of Francis Ford Coppola during the filming of The Godfather 2 and 3 was obviously decisive, as was that of Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, with whom he would film Heat by Michael Mann ten years later. Before the filming of The Godfather 2, we learn that he had asked, via his lawyer, Coppola to change some details of the script.
Even after missing out on a few major roles in movies he didn’t believe in, like Apocalypse Now, Kramer vs. Kramer, immortalized by Dustin Hoffman, or Terrence Malick’s Harvest From Heaven, he harbors no regrets. Always following his intuitions, abandoning films not made for him, Al Pacino succeeded in establishing himself in Hollywood and winning his first Oscar in 1982 for Scent of A Woman, the adaptation of Parfum de femme by Dino Risi, with Vittorio Gasman.
Recently, he played a producer in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, and Jimmy Hoffa, the famous American trade unionist murdered by the mafia, in Irishman by Martin Scorsese, where he finds De Niro for the fourth time. Roles to which he brings an exceptional human depth, as in House of Gucci by Ridley Scott, in which he plays Aldo, the brother of Maurizio Gucci, assassinated on March 27, 1995.
Tuesday evening, Al Pacino will tell his life without nostalgia and will undoubtedly deliver some projects, like this small role in Modigliani directed by Johnny Depp, which he evokes in an interview with Figaro.
“An Evening with Al Pacino”, Salle Pleyel, Tuesday, April 25.