Al Pacino, born in 1940, American motion-picture and stage actor, best known for his work in Hollywood gangster films. He is distinguished by his willingness to appear in risky productions and unusual roles.
Born Alfredo Pacino in New York City, he dropped out of Manhattan's High School for Performing Arts at the age of 17. He continued his acting studies, however, first at the Herbert Berghof Studio and later at Actors Studio (headed by American director and actor Lee Strasberg), while working at various jobs and appearing in off-Broadway productions (seeBroadway). Dark, wiry, and passionate, Pacino was ideally suited for the gritty urban stage dramas popular in the 1960s. He won an Obie Award (presented for off-Broadway theater work) in 1968 for his role as a psychotic alcoholic in The Indian Wants the Bronx, and he won a Tony Award in 1969 for his performance as a drug addict in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? He again played an addict in his first important motion-picture role, the victimized antihero of The Panic in Needle Park (1971).
For his portrayal of the ambivalent heir to a Mafia dynasty in the gangster epic The Godfather(1972), written and directed by American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, Pacino received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. (He reprised the role in two sequels,The Godfather Part II, in 1974, and The Godfather Part III, in 1990.) The tremendous success of The Godfather made Pacino a star, but he refused to play roles traditionally given to leading male Hollywood actors. He played a gentle, doomed drifter in Scarecrow (1973); a homosexual bank robber in the tense political melodrama Dog Day Afternoon (1975), by American director Sidney Lumet; and a police detective in the controversial tale of homosexual life Cruising (1980).
After a string of motion pictures that did not achieve great commercial success, Pacino returned to acting in the theater, winning a second Tony Award in 1977 for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. His movie career revived with the success of Sea of Love (1989), and he won an Academy Award for his performance as a suicidal, blind war veteran in Scent of a Woman (1992). In 1996 Pacino made his directorial debut with Looking for Richard, a film about actors preparing to stage a production of the play Richard III by English dramatist William Shakespeare. The following year Pacino played the Devil disguised as a lawyer in The Devil’s Advocate.
