2023-04-23 10:00:00
On April 25, the actor from “The Godfather” and “Scarface” will reveal himself for two hours on the Pleyel stage in Paris. Confidences expected.
Par Jean-Luc Wachthausen
© ROY ROCHLIN / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
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Al Pacino will celebrate his 83rd birthday on April 25th. An anniversary that he will celebrate on the stage of the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The actor will tell his life, his films, his plays, in the company of Léa Salamé. A tete-a-tete in English, without translation. This is not the first time that he has engaged in this kind of self-portrait during an exceptional meeting with the public, revealing a little more his personality and his work as an actor.
In 2018 already, he had made the show two evenings in a row at the Théâtre de Paris and had promised: “I will come back. During this first meeting, he had evoked his childhood in the Bronx, his passion for Shakespeare with Richard III (he made an exciting documentary film of it, Looking for Richarddissecting all the nuances of his game), Julius Caesar et The Merchant of Venice. To this taste for the great classics is added that for more modern authors like Oscar Wilde, with Salomeand David Mamet, of whom he played two plays on Broadway, Glengarry Glen Ross et China Doll.
How does one become Al Pacino, after making his theater debut and attracting attention with a leading role in Panic in Needle Park by Jerry Schatzberg in 1971? The actor of cult characters like Serpico, Roy Cohn and Jimmy Hoffa, the Michael Corleone of sponsort the Tony Montana of Scarface explains, while cultivating mystery and multiplying anecdotes. So, about Star Wars, he admits that his teacher and mentor Charles Laughton and himself had not understood the story of George Lucas, preferring to decline and thus give way to Harrison Ford, of whom he adds jokingly: “He owes me his career ! »
The roles he turned down
Among his meetings, that of Francis Ford Coppola during the filming of Godfather 2 and 3 was obviously decisive, as was that of Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, with whom he would tour ten years later Heat by Michael Mann. Before filming the Godfather 2we learn that he had asked, via his lawyer, Coppola to change some details of the script.
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Even after missing out on a few major roles in movies he didn’t believe in, like Apocalypse Now, Kramer against Kramerimmortalized by Dustin Hoffman, or even The Harvests of Heaven of Terrence Malick, he has no regrets. Always following his intuitions, abandoning films not made for him, Al Pacino succeeded in establishing himself in Hollywood and winning his first Oscar in 1982 for Scent of A Woman, adaptation of Women’s perfume by Dino Risi, with Vittorio Gassman.
Recently, he played a producer in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, and Jimmy Hoffa, the famous American trade unionist murdered by the mafia, in Irishman by Martin Scorsese, where he finds De Niro for the fourth time. Roles to which he brings an exceptional human depth, as in House of Gucci by Ridley Scott, in which he plays Aldo, the brother of Maurizio Gucci, murdered on March 27, 1995.
Tuesday evening, Al Pacino will tell his life without nostalgia and will undoubtedly deliver some projects, like this small role in Modigliani directed by Johnny Depp, whom he talks about in an interview with Figaro.
“An evening with Al Pacino”, Salle Pleyel, Tuesday April 25.
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