Comprehensive information and links about Al Pacino

Al Pacino (born April 25, 1940 in The Bronx, New York, USAAl Pacino is a renowned Italian-American film actor.

Pacino was born to Italian American parents Salvatore Pacino (who was born in Italy) and Rose Gerard (the daughter of an Italian-born father and a New York-born mother of Italian descent). His parents divorced while Pacino was still a child. His grandparents originate from Corleone, Sicily.

In 1966, Pacino studied under legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg, finding acting a therapeutic outlet in a youth which saw him depressed and so impoverished he could barely afford the bus fares required to get him to his next audition. Yet by the end of the decade, he had won an Obie award for his stage work in , in which he played a heroin addict, that would showcase his talents and bring him to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola.

Pacino's rise to fame came after portraying Michael Corleone in Coppola's blockbuster 1972 Mafia film . Although numerous established actors, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and a then unknown Robert De Niro, were vying for the part, Coppola selected the relatively unknown Pacino. His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and, by the end of the 1970s he would have three more nominations, all for Best Actor. Despite further nominations, it wasn't until 1992 that Pacino would win an Oscar, for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the irascible, retired and blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's , making Pacino the first male actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and the first actor of either gender to achieve that feat and win for the lead acting nomination. (Jamie Foxx did the same in 2005.) Pacino has not received another nomination from the Academy since those two, but has won two Golden Globes since the turn of the century, the first being the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion picture, and the second for his role in the HBO miniseries .

Pacino's career took a downturn in the early 1980s and his appearances in the controversial proved to be both a career highlight and a defining role, earning Pacino a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as a Cuban drug lord who cries out the now infamous line, punctuated by an automatic rifle blast, " was a commercial and a critical dud, and Pacino returned to stage work for four years. He mounted workshop productions of in 1988 for producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival; and worked on his most personal project, , a play he had starred in Off Broadway in 1969 then re-mounted in 1985 with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in order to film a 50-minute movie version unreleased as of 2005.

Pacino remarked on his film hiatus that, "I remember back when everything was happening, '74, '75, doing [ ] on stage and reading that the reason I'd gone back to the stage was that my movie career was waning! That's been the kind of ethos, the way in which theater's perceived, unfortunately" [1].

Pacino re-surfaced in film in 1989's , which was to signal a return to form. The next year, in 1990, he recived an Oscar nomination as Big Boy Caprice in the box office hit Dick Tracy. Later, aside from his Oscar-winning turn in , and others.

Pacino has turned down a number of key roles in his career, including that of Han Solo in . In 1996 Pacino was set to play General Manuel Noriega in a major biographical motion picture when director Oliver Stone pulled the plug on production to focus on the movie .

The quality of Pacino's performances, as well as his larger-than-life onscreen presence (in reality he's 5'6"), have established him as one of world's major actors. Pacino still performs theater work and has also dabbled in direction. While earned good notices. Several characters essayed by Pacino are famous in Popular culture. On the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains, he has three appearances on both the lists, only the second actor to do so. On the Heroes as Frank Serpico and on the villains list as Tony Montana and Michael Corleone.

Although he has never been married, Pacino has three children. The first, Julie Marie, is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, Anton and Olivia, with ex-girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo.

Trivia* His voice is husky due to cigarette smoking which he quit and now only smokes herbal cigarettes or cigars.

, Sunday, Sept. 17, 1989: "Pacino Re-Focuses on Film Career: After Five-Year Absence, Actor Returns to the Big Screen", by Frank Lovece