"It was very difficult to deal with that fame," Al Pacino admits on the anniversary of the famous film.
Before being cast as Michael Corleone, Al Pacino was an unknown face in Hollywood. He had only participated in two small films (Me, Natalia, and Panic in Needle Park), and he preferred acting on theatrical circuits rather than peeking into the film industry.
Although he had learned from the best, his money problems became so pressing that he had to prostitute himself... and then Francis Ford Coppola got it between his eyebrows that he had to play the son of Don Vito. The people at Paramount didn't quite see it (just as they didn't trust Coppola's work either), but when Pacino completed that scene in which he killed his father's attackers after leaving the bathroom with a gun, any doubts were dispelled.
50 years later, the Oscar-winning actor for Essence of a Woman has reflected on how hard it was for him to accept the fame that The Godfather brought him. After being nominated for an Oscar for this performance, Pacino returned to being Michael for the remaining two installments of the trilogy, polishing the portrait of a character who has rightly gone down in movie history. In full celebration of the anniversary (with The Godfather being re-released in several cinemas around the world), Pacino declares for the New York Times that "it is difficult to explain today who he was at that moment and the impact he had." “I felt as if all of a sudden a veil had been lifted and all eyes were on me.”
“Of course, they were also on other members of the film. But The Godfather gave me a new identity that was hard to take." Pacino became a star, developing one of the most acclaimed careers Hollywood had ever seen. “It is a work in which I was very lucky to participate. But it has taken me a lifetime to accept it and move on. It's not as if he played Superman ”, he points out the complex roles that he was forced to choose starting with Michael Corleone. Coppola, for his part, has always claimed that he had Pacino in mind for the role ever since he read the original book by Mario Puzo (also the film's co-writer).
“When I read the novel, I couldn't stop imagining Pacino as Michael. And he had no second choice. For me, it was always Al Pacino. It's the reason I was so tenacious about him playing Michael." For the interpreter to be cast in The Godfather was like "winning the lottery", in effect, but he admits that it is not that he had the option of rejecting it either. And he remembers the rejection that Hollywood inspired in him then, following a conversation with the famous actor Charles Laughton. “Francis loved me. He had done a movie before, and I wasn't that interested in movies then. My head was elsewhere. I felt left out of the first films I made”.
“I remember saying to my acting coach Charlie Laughton, 'Wow, they talk about it being real, but it's not. There are cables everywhere and you have to repeat everything!’ You do it and they say 'Well, do it again'. It's real and not real at the same time, it's hard to get used to." But Pacino, as in every amazing movie he's made since The Godfather, ended up getting used to it. And we are all very grateful for that.
