Alfredo James Pacino ( ; ; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. Known for his intense performances on stage and screen, Pacino is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. His career spans more than five decades, during which he has earned many accolades, achieving the Triple Crown of Acting by winning an Academy Award, a Tony Award, and an Emmy Award. He was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016, and the Sam Wanamaker Award in 2026. A method actor, Pacino studied at HB Studio and the Actors Studio where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg. Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $3 billion worldwide.
Pacino started acting in theater, ranging from underground to off-Broadway and out-of-town productions to Broadway. He won two Tony Awards for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969) and Best Actor in a Play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1977). He also played "Teach" in Off-Broadway, Broadway, and West End productions of David Mamet's American Buffalo (1981–1984), starred in multiple productions of Oscar Wilde's Salome (1992, 2003, 2006), and earned a third Tony Award nomination for portraying Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (2010), a role he played in the 2004 feature film adaptation.
After garnering acclaim for his first lead film role in The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Pacino was cast as Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), reprising the role in its two sequels (1974, 1990). He was nominated for Academy Awards for the first two films. Pacino would go on to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Scent of a Woman (1992). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979), Dick Tracy (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and The Irishman (2019). Pacino has also starred in Scarecrow (1973), Scarface (1983), Sea of Love (1989), Carlito's Way (1993), Heat (1995), Donnie Brasco, The Devil's Advocate (both 1997), The Insider, Any Given Sunday (both 1999), Insomnia (2002), Ocean's Thirteen (2007), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and House of Gucci (2021), among others. On television, Pacino has acted in multiple productions for HBO, including Angels in America (2003) and the Jack Kevorkian biopic You Don't Know Jack (2010), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for each. Pacino starred in the Amazon Prime Video series Hunters (2020–2023).
Pacino made his directorial debut with the documentary Looking for Richard (1996), for which he won a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. He directed and starred in Chinese Coffee (2000), Wilde Salomé (2011), and Salomé (2013). He wrote his memoir Sonny Boy, which was published by Penguin Press in 2024. Since 1995, Pacino has been co-president of the Actors Studio (he was the co-artistic director from 1981 to 1983).
Early life and education Alfredo James Pacino was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on April 25, 1940, the only child of Sicilian American parents Rose () and Salvatore Pacino. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from San Fratello. His parents divorced when he was two years old. Following the separation, his mother took him to the South Bronx and they lived with his maternal grandparents, Kate and James Gerardi, who had emigrated from Corleone when young. Pacino's father moved to California to work as an insurance salesman and restaurateur in Covina, California. From the age of three or four, his mother would take him to the movies and he began to run the characters' lines through his head. "Sonny Boy" was his mother's nickname for Pacino, taken from the popular song by Al Jolson, which she often sang to him.
During his teenage years, Pacino's friends called him "Sonny," "Pacchi," and "Pistachio" (derived from his favorite flavor of ice cream). He had ambitions to become a baseball player and was also nicknamed "The Actor". Pacino began smoking and drinking at age nine and used marijuana casually at age 13, but he abstained from hard drugs. His two closest friends died from drug abuse at the ages of 19 and 30. Growing up in the South Bronx, Pacino got into occasional fights and was considered something of a troublemaker at school. Pacino said that his mother saved his life and kept him off drugs.
He attended Herman Ridder Junior High School, but soon dropped out of most of his classes except for English. Blanche Rothstein, who was his junior high school teacher, saw his acting potential at a young age, casting him in school plays and having him read the Bible passages at their student assemblies. She notably visited their family's tenement apartment to speak with his grandmother that he was "made to do this," which Pacino credited as the turning point in his life. He subsequently attended the High School of Performing Arts, after gaining admission by audition. His mother disagreed with his decision, believing that "poor people don't do acting." After an argument, he left home.
To finance himself and pursue his dreams, Pacino took low-paying jobs as a messenger, busboy, janitor, switchboard operator, usher, and postal clerk, as well as once working in the mailroom for Commentary. He acted in basement plays in New York's theatrical underground. As a teenager, he tried to join the membership organization Actors Studio but was rejected. Instead, Pacino joined HB Studio, where he met acting teacher Charlie Laughton, who became his mentor and best friend. The studio let him go to classes for free, in exchange for cleaning the hallways and dance studios. At night, Pacino would practice Shakespeare soliloquies while wandering the streets. In this period, he was often unemployed or homeless, and sometimes slept on the street, in theaters, or at a friend's home.
In 1962, Pacino's mother died at the age of 43. The following year, his maternal grandfather also died. Pacino recalled it as the lowest point of his life and said, "I was 22 and the two most influential people in my life had gone, so that sent me into a tailspin."
After four years at HB Studio, Pacino successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio. Pacino studied "method acting" under acting coach Lee Strasberg, who appeared with Pacino in the films The Godfather Part II and in ...And Justice for All. During later interviews, he spoke about Strasberg and the Studio's effect on his career. "The Actors Studio meant so much to me in my life. Lee Strasberg hasn't been given the credit he deserves ... Next to Charlie, it sort of launched me. It really did. That was a remarkable turning point in my life. It was directly responsible for getting me to quit all those jobs and just stay acting." In another interview, he added, "It was exciting to work for him [Lee Strasberg] because he was so interesting when he talked about a scene or talked about people. One would just want to hear him talk, because things he would say, you'd never heard before ... He had such a great understanding ... he loved actors so much."
Career 1967–1971: Theater roles and film debut
In 1967, Pacino spent a season at the Charles Playhouse in Boston, performing in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! (his first major paycheck: US$125 a week); and in Jean-Claude Van Itallie's America Hurrah. He met actress Jill Clayburgh on this play. They had a five-year romance and moved back to New York City. In 1968, Pacino starred in Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx at the Astor Place Theatre, playing Murph, a street punk. The play opened January 17, 1968, and ran for 177 performances; it was staged in a double bill with Horovitz's It's Called the Sugar Plum, starring Clayburgh. Pacino won an Obie Award for Best Actor for his role, with John Cazale winning for Best Supporting Actor and Horowitz for Best New Play.Grobel; p. 200 Martin Bregman saw the play and became Pacino's manager, a partnership that became fruitful in the years to come, as Bregman encouraged Pacino to do The Godfather, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon.Grobel; p. 16 About his stage career, Pacino said, "Martin Bregman discovered me ... I was 26, 25 ... he discovered me and became my manager. And that's why I'm here. I owe it to Marty, I really do".Al Pacino and the cast and crew talk Scarface | | South Africa . Filmcontact.com (August 26, 2011). Retrieved May 22, 2014.
Pacino took the production of The Indian Wants the Bronx to Italy for a performance at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. It was Pacino's first journey to Italy; he later recalled that "performing for an Italian audience was a marvelous experience". Pacino and Clayburgh were cast in "Deadly Circle of Violence", an episode of the ABC television series NYPD, premiering November 12, 1968. Clayburgh at the time was also appearing on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, playing the role of Grace Bolton. Her father would send the couple money each month to help with finances.
On February 25, 1969, Pacino made his Broadway debut in Don Petersen's Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? at the Belasco Theater, produced by A&P heir Huntington Hartford. It closed after 39 performances on March 29, 1969, but Pacino received rave reviews and won the Tony Award on April 20, 1969. Pacino continued performing onstage in the 1970s, winning a second Tony Award for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and performing the title role in Richard III. In the 1980s, Pacino again achieved critical success on stage while appearing in David Mamet's American Buffalo, for which Pacino was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Since 1990, Pacino's stage work has included revivals of Eugene O'Neill's Hughie, Oscar Wilde's Salome and in 2005 Lyle Kessler's Orphans. Pacino found acting enjoyable and realized he had a gift for it while studying at The Actors Studio. However, his early work was not financially rewarding. After his success on stage, Pacino made his film debut in 1969 with a brief appearance in Me, Natalie, an independent film starring Patty Duke.Grobel; p. xx In 1970, Pacino signed with the talent agency Creative Management Associates (CMA). Pacino made his feature film debut portraying a heroin addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971).
1972–1983: Stardom and acclaim
Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Michael Corleone in what became a blockbuster Mafia film, The Godfather (1972). Although Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and the little-known Robert De Niro tried out for the part, Coppola selected Pacino, to the dismay of studio executives who wanted someone better known. Pacino's performance earned him an Academy Award nomination, and offered a prime example of his early acting style, described by Halliwell's Film Guide as "intense" and "tightly clenched". The longstanding rumor was that Pacino boycotted the Academy Award ceremony, insulted at being nominated for the Supporting Acting award as he had more screen time than co-star and Best Actor winner Marlon Brandowho also boycotted the awards, but for unrelated reasons.Grobel; p. xxi However, in Pacino's memoir released in 2024, he said it was appalling to learn about the rumor now and clarified that he skipped the ceremony due to his struggles with fame. He was terrified, and it overlapped with him working in Boston in the theatre.