Al Pacino Quotations

I'm an actor, not a star. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools.

In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers.

I'm so shy now I wear sunglasses everywhere I go.

My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.

My weaknesses... I wish I could come up with something. I'd probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they're the same thing.

It's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart.

The truth is, you know, we need our anodynes. You know that word, anodynes? We need that in life some times. A good warm bath can be one for you, or a whatever.

There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.

The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you. You're in a conversation and everybody's agreeing with what you're saying - even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don't want to hear.

You need some insecurity if you're an actor. It keeps the pot boiling. I haven't yet started to think about retiring. I was shocked when I heard about Paul Newman retiring at age 82. Most actors just fade away like old soldiers.

I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.

When I was younger, I would go to auditions to have the opportunity to audition, which would mean another chance to get up there and try out my stuff, or try out what I learned and see how it worked with an audience, because where are you gonna get an audience?

I used to wear disguises, like hats and false beards, just to walk around and avoid attention.

I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?

I don't think actors should ever expect to get a role, because the disappointment is too great. You've got to think of things as an opportunity. An audition's an opportunity to have an audience.

I don't ever give my opinion. Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

I've never liked the recognition, the questions, the publicity. I have often felt like running away and hiding.

The problem with me is, I guess, the way I express myself, you have to be with me 50 years before you can get a sense of what I'm talking about.

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.

I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx.

Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.

You do get very tired sometimes, when you're sitting around for hours in movies. You get depleted.

Explain to me what Italian-American culture is. We've been here 100 years. Isn't Italian-American culture American culture? That's because we're so diverse, in terms of intermarriage.

Most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.

All due respect and trying to be as modest as I can be, I am a dancer. But I don't think I would be on 'Dancing with the Stars,' mainly because I would be too shy.

I've often said there's two kinds of actors. There's a more gregarious type and the shy type.

I was not prepared for fame. It hit me hard, and I did not have the capacity to cope.

That's where humour lives for me. In the body. The Steve Martin kind of stuff or Jim Carrey, that's what I like. I've always felt that's what I would like to do.

I've always been in the theater. I've always gone to it. That's been my way to cope. Early on in my career, I remember running - fleeing - to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

I've never cared for guns. In fact, when I did 'Scent of a Woman' I had to learn how to assemble one.

When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies. It was her way of getting out, and she would take me with her. I'd go home and act all the parts. It had a tremendous influence on my becoming an actor.

Playing a character is an illusion, and I feel that when you know too much about a person, possibly part of that illusion is disrupted.

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.

My grandmother always came to my shows. She was always concerned about the way I dressed - even later on, when I was well known and I supported her.

Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it's not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.

It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for 'Scent of a Woman.' It was a new feeling. I'd never felt it. I don't see my Oscar much now. But when I first got it, there was a feeling for weeks afterward that I guess is akin to winning a gold medal in the Olympics.

It's never really that much fun for me to do movies anyway, because you - you know, you have to get up very early in the morning and you have to go in and you spend a lot of time waiting around.

Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.

I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.

Theater for me at one point was a lifestyle, too.

Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.

At this point in my career, I don't have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things. My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.

When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I'm going to do a big scene that's dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.

When you're reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call "taking up with a writer," something happens.

[Marlon] Brando's a giant on every level. When he acts it's as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors.

Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn't want to do movies that much. I found they took a lot out of you and they were exhausting for me in a lot of ways.

I turned down a lot of films before I made my first one. I knew that it was time for me to get into movies.

The reasons you have for doing a movie will vary with the way your life is going. There was a time when a made a some movies because I felt I needed to work. And I didn't think about the material as much. But sometimes I've thought about the material a lot and thought I was doing the right thing, and it didn't work out.

It's so funny when people who are not used to making movies get into it. You just can't believe how insufferably boring it is. Waiting around and doing these lines over and over and finally having to go in and loop the lines and dub them.

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

Responsibilities are relative. My responsibility is to a character in a script, to a part I'm playing.

Learning (Shakespeare's plays) ...in school was a bit of a bore.

Any project that I find encouraging that isn't attached to a studio, I can go to them, which I definitely would. You have to take an interest in what you do.

You don't get to know anybody in a movie until after it's over. You work less together in a film than you do onstage.

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.

I' ve won awards. And they didn't make me feel bad winning them. They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award.

I would say I am more concerned with the plays I'm going to do than the movies. I'm more comfortable in a play. In film, there's always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there's more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through.

I wouldn't be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast. Except if something was maybe a play on television or some great television script.

Being the actors of the craft, the trade, one of the big things you do and you learn is about repeating. There is something to the repeats. I think that is part of what is healthy to young actors. Get out and learn something just through doing that, repeating.

I personally think if you're given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There's no doubt in my mind about it.

Man is a little bit better than his reputation, and a little bit worse

It's not personal, it's strictly business

I am more alive in the theater than anywhere else, but what I take into the theater I get from the streets.

Our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect it.

You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.

If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it's just great fodder for you. It's wonderful source stuff that we die for.

The thing is doing it, that's what it's all about. Not in the results of it. After all what is a risk? It's a risk not to take risks. Otherwise, you can go stale and repeat yourself. I don't feel like a person who takes risks. Yet there's something within me that must provoke controversy because I find it wherever I go. Anybody who cares about what he does takes risks.

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you, so that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It's an extraordinary thing. It's wild turf up there.

Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.

Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.

Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities. I've never felt sensitive to the whole issue, because being macho has never been a problem with me.

An actor basically likes to be asked to do something, no matter what position he's in. It feels more natural. Sitting and waiting is more gratifying.

Shakespeare's plays are more violent than 'Scarface.'

I went back to the stage because it was my way of dealing with the success I had, my way of coping. It was a way of escaping the responsibilty of what was happening.

Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.

I'm always on a red carpet . . . the other day I thought, this ain't bad. You can meet people on it.

Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.

One of the things that made me want to be an actor more than ever was seeing a Chekhov play, "The Sea Gull," when was 14 in the Bronx.

I believe in one day at a time; you've got TODAY, that's what you' ve got.

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I've stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words... I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

I want to be interesting in an interview just as much as I want to do well in a part.

I come from the South Bronx - a true descendant of the melting pot. I grew up in a really mixed neighborhood; it was a very integrated life.

I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.

My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted.

There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty. Lee Strasberg is like that, my grandfather was like that. These are the kinds of men I've had close relationships with.

I went to Performing Arts because that was the only school that would accept me. My scholastic level was not very high.

I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much.

I didn't go for the needle at all. I never cared for drugs, because I saw what they did to most people. I thought that was the end of the road.

Drinking and smoking grass were a part of my life as far back as I can remember.

I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life. If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I'm an artist, I hate saying that.

Certainly the movies were always in the air for me. I come from the era when actors thought it was a big deal to be in the movies.

Actually, the person I related to was James Dean. I grew up with the Dean thing. Rebel Without A Cause had a very powerful effect on me.

Love is overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate