Al Pacino

Alfredo James Pacino was born on April 25, 1940, in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, the only child of Sicilian Italian-American parents Rose and Salvatore Pacino. His parents divorced when he was two years old, after which his mother relocated with him to the South Bronx, where they lived with his maternal grandparents, Kate and James Gerardi, who had emigrated from Corleone. His father eventually settled in Covina, California, working as an insurance salesman and restaurateur. From early childhood, Pacino's mother took him regularly to the movies, and he developed a habit of mentally rehearsing the characters' dialogue. The nickname "Sonny Boy," drawn from the Al Jolson song his mother frequently sang to him, stayed with him throughout his life and later became the title of his memoir, published by Penguin Press in 2024.

Pacino attended Herman Ridder Junior High School, where teacher Blanche Rothstein recognized his potential and cast him in school plays. He later gained admission by audition to the High School of Performing Arts. After leaving home following a disagreement with his mother over his career ambitions, he supported himself through a series of low-paying jobs — messenger, busboy, janitor, switchboard operator, usher, and postal clerk — while acting in basement productions in New York's theatrical underground. Rejected from the Actors Studio as a teenager, he enrolled instead at HB Studio, where acting teacher Charlie Laughton became his mentor. The studio allowed him to attend classes without charge in exchange for cleaning its hallways and dance studios. After four years there, Pacino successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio, where he studied method acting under Lee Strasberg.

In 1967, Pacino spent a season at the Charles Playhouse in Boston, performing in Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! and Jean-Claude Van Itallie's America Hurrah, where he met actress Jill Clayburgh. In 1968, he starred in Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx at the Astor Place Theatre, playing a street punk named Murph across 177 performances, and won an Obie Award for Best Actor for the role. His Broadway career extended from 1969 to 2015 and included productions such as Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Merchant of Venice, Salome, Hughie, and A China Doll. His stage work earned him two Tony Awards: Best Featured Actor in a Play for Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? in 1969 and Best Actor in a Play for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel in 1977, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play in 1977. In 2010, Pacino appeared in a stage production of The Merchant of Venice, playing Shylock, a role he had also portrayed in a 2004 feature film adaptation of the same work.

Since 1981, Pacino has maintained a long association with the Actors Studio, serving as co-artistic director from 1981 to 1983 and as co-president since 1995. His screen career, which spans more than five decades, includes Academy Award nominations for The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979), Dick Tracy (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and The Irishman (2019), and he received the Academy Award for Best Actor for Scent of a Woman (1992). Among his many other film appearances are Scarface (1983), Carlito's Way (1993), Heat (1995), The Devil's Advocate (1997), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $3 billion worldwide.

On television, Pacino won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his work in Angels in America (2003) and again for the Jack Kevorkian biopic You Don't Know Jack (2010), both produced for HBO. He later starred in the Amazon Prime Video series Hunters, which ran from 2020 to 2023. Pacino made his directorial debut with the documentary Looking for Richard (1996), for which he received a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. He subsequently directed and starred in Chinese Coffee (2000), Wilde Salomé (2011), and Salomé (2013). Across his career, Pacino has received numerous honors including four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016, achieving the distinction known as the Triple Crown of Acting. Originally from New York, New York, Pacino remains one of the most decorated performers in the history of American theater and film.