Rightly to be considered one of the greatest actors of all time, Al Pacino has revealed the role that he thinks should have gotten some love at the Oscars. While promoting the release of his autobiography “Sonny Boy,” Pacino revealed on the BBC Today program that one his greatest roles, and the role that he believes should have resulted in him putting another golden statue in his trophy cabinet, is that of ruthless drug kingpin Tony Montana in director Brian De Palma’s iconic Scarface.
A character that has adorned the walls of many a rapper, Tony Montana is one of Pacino’s best-known roles amid a glittering career, but it was overlooked by the Academy. In fact, the movie was, rather surprisingly in hindsight, nominated for a Razzie for Worst Director at the 4th Golden Raspberry Awards. However, for Pacino, the role is one that was unfairly snubbed, with the acclaimed actor saying of Scarface…
“It’s got something. It was powerful…It was the hip-hop community that embraced it and were able to see the story in there.
I would have liked to have even got nominated for that one.”
While he may not have won for the 1983 crime drama, Pacino did take home the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, and has been nominated a total of seven times for the likes of The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Irishman.
Al Pacino Says He Was Almost Fired From The Godfather
Al Pacino’s newly released autobiography makes several shocking revelations about some of the hit movies that the actor has been a part of in his decade-spanning career. One of the most shocking is that he was almost fired from one of his most famous, and most important, roles: Michael Corleone in The Godfather. In an excerpt from the book (via The Guardian), Pacino reveals that the studio didn’t want him for the role, and were instead looking at the likes of Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson.
“Paramount didn’t want me to play Michael Corleone. They wanted Jack Nicholson. They wanted Robert Redford. They wanted Warren Beatty or Ryan O’Neal. In the book, Puzo had Michael calling himself ‘the sissy of the Corleone family.’ He was supposed to be small, dark-haired, handsome in a delicate way, no visible threat to anybody. That didn’t sound like the guys that the studio wanted. But that didn’t mean it had to be me.”
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Thankfully for both Pacino and cinema itself, the actor found firm friends in both director Francis Ford Coppola and co-star Diane Keaton. And the rest is movie history.
“But here’s the secret: Francis wanted me. He wanted me and I knew that. And there’s nothing like when a director wants you. He also gave me a gift in the form of Diane Keaton. He had a few actors he was auditioning for the role of Kay, but the fact that he wanted to pair me up with Diane suggested she had an edge in the process. I knew she was doing well in her career and had been appearing on Broadway in shows like Hair and Play It Again, Sam with Woody Allen. A few days before the screen test, I met Diane in Lincoln Center in New York City at a bar, and we just hit it off. She was easy to talk to and funny, and she thought I was funny too. I felt like I had a friend and an ally right away.”