Al Pacino Quotes
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Miscellaneous Pictures
Picture Gallery 2 Miscellaneous Pictures
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Quotations by Al Pacino:
"Vanity is my favourite sin."
"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's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart."
"I can't say I've been sober though. I don't like that word. What does it mean? 'Sober! He's very sober'."
"I was a kid when James Dean came out. Dean was the inspiration. Even the red jacket he wore in 'Rebel Without a Cause,' you saw that red jacket popping up all over the place. He really reached people in a way; it was kind of a phenomenon when you think of it. I wonder what it would be like today, that kind of a person ... he made that connection with his audience. And I remember at that time my mother loved him. He reached everybody."
"There are times when I have a temperament. Yes, my temperament is there ... but I hope I'm gentle. Yes, I think I am."
"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."
"When I try to explain anything I always end up trying to be right usually, but not truthful necessarily. Trying to give the right answer or what I think is the right answer. It's a human instinct. You try to be as clever as you can be. You're trying to come off like you really know what the hell's going on, when you don't!"
"We start to realize that there are anodynes in life that help us through the day. I don't care if it's a walk in the park, a look out the window, a good bubble bath - whatever. Even a meal you like, or a friend you want to call. That helps us solve all this stuff in our head."
"I'm single and I don't particularly like it. I'm certainly the kind of person who prefers ... it ... it ... It's good to have someone in your life that you're going through this thing with. It's good. That's a thing in life that I aspire to."
"My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness."
"I like what Norman Mailer said about alcohol: 'Drink has killed a lot of my brain cells and I think I would have been a better writer without it, but it would be one less way to relax.'"
"I don't need bodyguards. I'm from the South Bronx."
"Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them."
"I'd like to be remembered as the only man who lived to be 250 years old!"
On whether acting and his roles reflected who he is: "In the end you're just playing a role."
"Scarface - first you get the money, then you power and then you get the women"
"I'll tell you something. And this is a fact. When I was doing 'Scarface', I remember being in love at that time. One of the few times in my life. And I was so glad it was at that time. I would come home and she would tell me about her life that day and all her problems and I remember saying to her, look, you really got me through this picture because I would shed everything when I came home."
"Yeah, that's right; they were together. Someone put it very distinctly once to me when they thought Brando was the force, in a way, and the genius, and James Dean was kind of a sonnet, you know? And to describe Jimmy Dean as a sonnet — I feel it's really accurate."
"That's right! That's right! We know the best feeling in the world is the one between the second and third martini. That was my deal. I just enjoyed who I became when I was drinking, so that was something hard to break. I became much quieter, and funny. I must say, that kind of thing came out."
"Quality is higher, and the films we are choosing are ones that really found their audience in a massive way through DVD."
"I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star."
"He sees the gift, ... He sees the real thing, and he's very turned on by that. An old friend of mine used to say, 'If I dig it, it's mine.' And I think with Walter he digs him, he digs what he can do, and therefore it turns him on and he knows he can help him."
"I'm constantly striving to break through to something new. You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself."
"The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers."
"I guess you find yourself repeating certain motifs. But at the heart of it all, I'm an actor, always looking for a role. And then you try to make things fresh."
"I'd like to be remembered as the only man who lived to be 250 years old!"
"People always said that time, the '70s, was about pretty boys, and then I came along!"
"My grandfather was a plasterer. He had such a love for what he did. You felt that he really wanted to get up and do it again the next day. Acting is all about pursuit and staying with something. What is the saying? He who continues in his folly will someday be wise."
"But I was just lucky. People like Coppola were making films, and I got opportunities."
"I see so many plays I wished I'd done. They would've been so important for my growth. That's what I recommend all the time -- involve yourself in the classics. You'll learn a lot. It will give you the variety you can never get if you constantly do the same thing."
"I couldn't exist just doing films. But on the other hand, there is the fame that comes with it, and the money. My problem is I still want to play Hamlet in some little theater somewhere, and time is running out."
"I've been doing this [acting] for 30 years. It's not that my time is running out. But I'm either too old for specific roles or they don't interest me in the same way they did a few years ago. If I want to do a play, that's a year out of my life. As long as I keep the idea that the play comes first, I can handle it."
On his friend and Heat (1995) co-star Robert De Niro: "As an old village poet put it to me in the 1960s. [If you dig it, it's yours]. I dug Sidney Lumet back then. I dig him now because what he had to give, I took and made it mine. I'm forever grateful along with all the other actors and writers who have benefited from Sidney's genius". Presenting the Lifetime of Achievement Award to director Sidney Lumet at the 2005 Academy Awards.
On Robert De Niro: I remember seeing things that Bob had done in the past, and very recent times, and have been taken with the work so much that I even wrote [him] about it. Some of his great work -- which is plenty -- I was staggered by the subtlety of his portrayal and the warmth, which is what we often talk about with Bob among us actors who admire him so. It is the warmth and the way he approaches things."
"At least in my time, I grew up uh... you had to... you... kind of... averted ambition. It was... it had a kind of pejorative connotation, for some reason. Ambition was uh... was negative. I don't believe that, but I do... do see that ambition is relative. Somebody asked David Mamet, a very interesting... he had a very interesting answer. And I hate to quote him because I... I haven't had his approval. But it's a... such a beautiful thing I think I'm gonna go out on a limb. Someone said to him, "David, you write movies", which he does brilliantly, he writes plays, he writes books, he sent me a book. And someone asked him, "David, you are just constantly writing, writing all the time, how do you do it?" And he said, "It beats thinking". (laughs) I... I thought... I thought... It's just a great quote. I... I... and I... I... kind of... I kind of agree. You know, that's why when anyone talks to me about working, and stuff, I think well, you know, it beats thinking. And so if it's ambitious, it's really about engaging in what it is you do."
"We know each other's minds. We have shared some things that are personal to us, such as our roles. I know Bobby through his roles. But, then, I don't think we actually talked about the actual work of actors."
On doing Scarecrow (1973) with Gene Hackman: "Gene and I are two people not very similar. We had to play a very close relationship, but I just didn't think we were as connected as we should have been. We seemed apart. We didn't have altercations, we didn't hate each other. But we didn't communicate, didn't think in the same terms. Gene and I were thrown together, but under ordinary circumstances we'd never cavort or be friends. It was two worlds - but I have to say that I was as much responsible as he was."
"So when they take the music away, you have to find an equinox, and part of it is the way it's interpreted and the style and all that -- if that means something to you. I certainly don't understand what I just said."
"The challenge? It's always a challenge of a sort. It's a challenge to get up and go and leave your family and go out there in all different parts of the world and do a picture and try to make it come alive...You're still challenged for that. I mean, it's the same story. It's just not changed. It seems to be the same thing it always was. It's this effort. If you get excited about a thing then things are generally a little easier. If you get enthusiastic and you want to do something and you feel you are into something then things start to come. But usually to find the enthusiasm and the appetite, that's the challenge." - On whether or not acting is still challenging for him
"Acting gives you some kind of exaltation, it deeply affects your soul, your thoughts, and maybe your body, too. Acting creates anguish and questions. You can't live with it, but you can't live without."
"'Coffee' is done, I got a couple of little important things to do about it, like little tiny things, and THEN I will unveil it. It's not a movie that you put in a...It needs a certain environment to flourish in. It's just the way it is. It doesn't make it better or worse than the picture. It's just the way it is, the nature of it." - On why his film Chinese Coffee (2000) has yet to be released
"I keep going back to it. I enjoy working it out, not necessarily professionally, but reading it to people in small groups and seeing the way they respond to it. It's an affirmation. It makes you feel good. I toured colleges and high schools with Shakespeare reading sections, scenes, paragraphs and listening to the beautiful music of his words. I enjoy the meter of it. I enjoy the big places it takes you and the size of it. If I were a singer I would be singing arias because it just clears you up. There's a lot of hope in it for me. There's a lot of life. It lifts you up."
"I've always believed, I always hoped...I don't think I know what I'm saying when I say this, but I was hoping that we could have a museum where we had films. That there was a museum where films were, like, hung. Like paintings. And you went to the museum. I got the movie _Local Stigmatic, The (1989)_ that I made. It's 52 minutes and everybody has seen it now because I've personally got them in to see it, to show it to them and I paid them for it, too. But it's over at the Museum of Modern Art and I love saying...This is really pretentious of me, this is what I really like. I love to say: 'Oh, it's at the Museum of Modern Art. Isn't that great?' 'Have you released it?' 'No, I never did.' I love saying that, you know? 'How come?' 'Because I didn't feel like it.' It's fun to do that."
"I have the same doubts I've always had. Maybe that's what keeps me going. I worked with Lee Strasberg [the late Actors Studio honcho] -- the guru of the theater. But I never really knew him until I worked with him. Working together is like two people on a tightrope. You're balancing and checking and dependent on each other -- a mutual relationship. Acting is 'I throw you the ball, you throw me the ball.'"
"The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers."
"I was never allowed out alone, so my mother used to take me to the movies and I'd come home and act out all the parts. It was a lonely childhood. With no brothers and sisters and having to stay off the streets, I had no friends. I felt isolated and odd. So, acting kept me sane."
On The Godfather: Part III (1990): "You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He's not a part of the GoodFellas thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right. I applaud Francis Coppola for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in Scarface when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it."
"Thank You, thank you. It's an honor for me to be here tonight, one night of the year, when all of us in this profession take a moment to honor, to recognize and encourage, excellence in the theater. So now to the directors. The work of the lighting people, costume set, even the actors, is instantly visible to the audience's eye. It's accessible, it's tangible, but with the director, it is somehow different. Usually the best direction is the direction you can't see. Is it almost imperceptible to the audiences which is probably why it is the most illusive, subtle of theatre graphs. Now who are these people? What do they do? Well, the director usually helps encourage the writer, to shape the play, also direct the cast, and play, with actors, mostly actors, usually. He tries to bring the actors, to their highest creative potential, and this is not easy. Since actors are different, some actors would rather be left alone, others enjoy collaboration. Still others have to be sweet-talked, and congealed, and almost coaxed into their roles. Now the director must do all that, at the same time bring together the entire production, while maintaining his or her own vision of the play, satisfying both the playwrights' needs and intentions, and ultimately hoping to bring the audience to its feet in appreciation. This is not an easy job, (smiling), and so it is with great respect, and a little bit of awe, I present to you, the nominees for best direction of a play"...
"One hopes to find out about the [movie] you're in while you're doing it, not several years later, which is usually when I find out. I'm like, 'Wow, that was a dud! I didn't know, nobody would tell me!' I've done things for certain reasons, but it [comes from] thinking on your feet... Sometimes actors do things not because we have a great desire [for it], but because it's work, and I'm starting to wonder about that."
"Fame is a perversion of the natural human instinct for attention."
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