Al Pacino
Actor, director, and author Al Pacino is a unique and enduring figure in the world of American stage and film. He was born in East Harlem and grew up in the South Bronx. Pacino attended the famed School of Performing Arts until the age of seventeen when he moved on to study acting, first at the Herbert Berghof Studio (HB Studio) with teacher and coach Charlie Laughton and later at the legendary Actors Studio with mentor Lee Strasberg.
Pacino’s memoir Sonny Boy was published by Penguin Random House in October of last year. In the book, he discussed his childhood in the South Bronx, including his time at New York’s High School of Performing Arts, his big break in Hollywood, and how acting has always been a constant in his life.
Between 1963 and 1969, he honed his craft working in numerous theatrical productions, including William Saroyan’s Hello Out There for his off-Broadway debut in 1963; Why is a Crooked Letter in 1966, for which he won an off-Broadway Obie Award; The Indian Wants the Bronx, which earned him another Obie Award for Best Actor of the 1967-68 season; and Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? for his Broadway debut and first Tony Award in 1969. Pacino continued appearing onstage in the 1970s, receiving a second Tony Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and performing the title role in Shakespeare’s Richard III.
In the 1980s, he again achieved critical success on the stage while appearing in David Mamet’s American Buffalo. Since 1990, Pacino’s stage work has included revivals of Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie, Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and Lyle Kessler’s Orphans. In 2011, he portrayed Shylock in The Merchant of Venice on Broadway, garnering a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Play, and, in 2013, appeared on Broadway playing Shelley Levine in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross.
His first leading part in a feature film was in the 1971 drama Panic in Needle Park, and, the following year, Francis Ford Coppola selected him to take on the breakthrough role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Godfather and within the next six years he received another four Academy Award nominations for the films Serpico, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and …And Justice for All.
A long and rich film career has followed with over 45 titles, including Scarface, Sea of Love, The Insider, Donnie Brasco, HEAT (where he shared the screen for the first time with fellow film icon Robert De Niro), and Any Given Sunday. He garnered additional Academy Award nominations for his performances in Dick Tracy and Glengarry Glen Ross. His role as Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992. He played Shylock in Michael Radford’s film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. He directed and stars in the films Looking for Richard and Chinese Coffee.
Television work includes a rich relationship with HBO: first as Roy Cohn in the 2003 miniseries Angels in America and as Dr. Jack Kevorkian in You Don’t Know Jack in 2010, both of which garnered Golden Globes and Emmy Awards for Mr. Pacino’s performances. In 2013, he earned Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for the title role in David Mamet’s film Phil Spector.
Al Pacino directed the films Salome and Wilde Salome, where he stars as King Herod alongside Jessica Chastain as Salome. Wilde Salome received its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in 2011.
Pacino starred in an Oscar-nominated performance as Jimmy Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, co-starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival to high critical acclaim in 2019.
Pacino starred in Amazon Prime Video’s highly acclaimed series Hunters, which earned him his 19th Golden Globe nomination. In 2021, he portrayed Aldo Gucci in the celebrated film House of Gucci, directed by Ridley Scott. In the same year, he also appeared in the historical drama film American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally, distributed by Vertical Entertainment and Redbox Entertainment.
Pacino will next be seen in The Ritual, directed by David Midell and releasing June 2025 in the US by XYZ Films. He was recently seen in Knox Goes Away, directed and produced by Michael Keaton, and the Johnny Deep directed film Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness. He has several films slated for upcoming release, including Julian Schnabel’s, Hand of Dante, Alec Griffen Roth’s Billy Knight, Eif Rivera’s Killing Castro, Nic Pizzolatto’s Easy’s Waltz, and Lear Rex, his long-awaited adaptation of King Lear directed by Bernard Rose. He recently finished filming Dead Man’s Wire, directed by Gus Van Sant, which tells the true story of the kidnapping by Tony Kiritsis in the 1970s.
Pacino has been awarded the Kennedy Center Honor (2016), the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award (2007), the National Merit of Arts from President Obama (2011), and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures (2011).