Al Pacino on ‘The Godfather’: ‘It’s Taken Me a Lifetime to Accept It and Move On’
It’s hard to imagine “The Godfather” without Al Pacino. His understated performance as Michael Corleone, who became a respectable war hero despite his corrupt family, goes almost unnoticed for the first hour of the film — until at last he asserts himself, gradually taking control of the Corleone criminal operation and the film along with it.
But there would be no Al Pacino without “The Godfather,” either. The actor was a rising star of New York theater with just one movie role, in the 1971 drug drama “The Panic in Needle Park,” when Francis Ford Coppola fought for him, against the wishes of Paramount Pictures, to play the ruminative prince of his Mafia epic. A half-century’s worth of pivotal cinematic roles followed, including two more turns as Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” and “Part III.”
“The Godfather” premiered in New York on March 15, 1972, and 50 years later, you can imagine all the reasons Pacino wouldn’t want to talk about it anymore. Maybe he’d be embarrassed or annoyed about how this one performance, from the outset of his movie career, still dominates his résumé, or perhaps he has said all there is to say about it.
But in a telephone interview last month, Pacino, now 81, was quite philosophical, even whimsical, about discussing the film. He remains an ardent admirer of the movie and of the lengths that Coppola and his co-stars went to support him, and he is still awe-struck about how it single-handedly gave him his career.
