In his new memoir, Al Pacino sets the record straight on a decades-old rumor surrounding his time making The Godfather.
While the prolific actor has a career that precedes itself, it was perhaps Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather that turned him into a Hollywood staple and made him a household name.
Apart from being the highest-grossing film of 1972, The Godfather also earned Pacino his first ever nomination at the Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Michael Corleone.
Pacino’s portrayal of mobster son Michael Corleone earned him his first Oscar nomination. (Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
In Pacino’s new memoir, Sonny Boy, the actor delves into his illustrious career and details the untold side of making some of the most pivotal films in cinema. While Pacino had a lot to say about making The Godfather, including how he was almost fired during filming, he notably addressed a decades-old rumor on his supposed disapproval of the Academy placing him in the Best Supporting Actor category rather than the Best Actor category along with co-star Marlon Brando.
“I’ve only recently learned that the perception in the industry was that I snubbed the Oscars,” Pacino wrote in the memoir, addressing rumors that he didn’t attend the ceremony in protest of his nomination category. “That I didn’t attend the ceremony because I was nominated for The Godfather as a supporting actor and not as a leading man. That I somehow felt slighted because I thought I deserved to be nominated in the same category as Marlon.”
Pacino’s co-star Marlon Brando went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor for his role of Vito Corleone. (Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images)
“Can you imagine that was a rumor that exploded at the time, and I only found out about it recently, all these years later?,” he added. “It explains a lot of the distance I felt when I came out to Hollywood to visit and to work. It was appalling to learn it now, having missed all these opportunities to deny it, not even knowing that this is what people thought of me.”
Pacino went on to explain that he didn’t attend the ceremony because he was ‘afraid.’ And while he may not have won the Oscar nod for The Godfather, Pacino went on to win his first Academy Award in 1993 for Best Actor in Scent of a Woman.
The actor also disclosed that he and co-star Diane Keaton were ‘certain’ they were in the ‘worst picture ever made’ while filming The Godfather‘s opening wedding scene.
The actor revealed he and Diane Keaton first thought they were in the ‘worst picture ever made.’ (FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images)
“[Diane] and I spent those first days laughing with each other, having to perform that opening wedding exposition scene from the screen test that we hated so much,” Pacino wrote in Sonny Boy.
“On the basis of just that one scene, we were certain we were in the worst picture ever made, and when we’d finish shooting for the day, we would go back to Manhattan and get drunk.
“Our careers were over, we thought,” he added.
Who knew Al Pacino and Diane Keaton could be so wrong?
