Al Pacino is considered a Hollywood legend, having starred in iconic films like the Godfather trilogy and Scarface.
But the prolific star, 84, recalled clashing with his late mom, Rose Gerard Pacino, over his choice to become an actor in his new memoir Sonny Boy, titled after his mom’s nickname for him.
The actor — who revealed that he went broke twice during his career — and his ’emotionally fragile’ single mother had argued when he dropped out of a number of his classes at school and moved out.
Rose, who struggled with depression, later passed away from an overdose when Pacino was just 22, and didn’t get to experience her son’s meteoric rise to fame.
‘If I am lucky enough, if I get to heaven perhaps I’ll reunite with my mother there. All I want is the chance to walk up to her, look in her eyes and simply say, “Hey ma, see what happened to me?”‘ he wrote, as per the Mirror.
One of the most influential actors of the 20th century, Pacino has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards.
His impressive list of accolades also includes four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and prestigious lifetime achievement honors such as the Cecil B. DeMille Award (2001), the AFI Life Achievement Award (2007), the National Medal of Arts (2011), and the Kennedy Center Honors (2016).
He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Scent of a Woman (1992).
He was also nominated 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).
He also starred in memorable films like Scarface (1983), The Godfather Part III (1990), Carlito’s Way (1993), Heat (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), The Devil’s Advocate (both 1997), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and House of Gucci (2021).
Born in Manhattan, New York City, on April 25, 1940 as Alfredo James Pacino, he was the only child of Sicilian Italian-American parents Rose (née Gerardi) and Salvatore Pacino.
His parents divorced when he was just two-years-old, and he went on to live with his mother and her parents.
Pacino’s mother died at the age of 43 in 1962.
After starring as a heroin addict in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) he caught the eye of director Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him as Michael Corleone in iconic Mafia film The Godfather (1972).
The relatively unknown actor faced stiff competition, auditioning alongside Hollywood heavyweights like Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, and Warren Beatty.
But, to the dismay of studio executives, Coppola chose Pacino to play the part of the youngest son of the head of the Corleone Mafia family, who later reluctantly becomes involved in the criminal underworld and eventually leads the family.
From there, his acting career has continued to soar to new heights.
His latest film offering was the Johnny Depp directed biographical drama ‘Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness.’
Elsewhere in the memoir he revealed that his massively successful films didn’t stop him from going broke — twice.
In the book, which is now available, the prolific actor writes about how his early hits didn’t provide him much income by Hollywood standards, which teed him up to run out of funds in the middle of the 1980s, when he worked infrequently.
Then, decades later, he again found himself running on empty after his blockbusters became rarer and rarer, even as his expenses had skyrocketed.
Pacino, who has never married, writes in the book about how his then-girlfriend Diane Keaton helped him overcome a first brush with insolvency in the mid-1980s.
Pacino’s money woes ironically begin with one of his biggest success, The Godfather.
Despite playing the lead in that film, Pacino was overshadowed by Marlon Brando as his on-screen father, who would win the Oscar for Best Actor for his acclaimed performance.
And because Pacino was still so early in his career, he reportedly only earned about $35,000 for his performance, which would be around $265,000 in today’s dollars — well below a lead actor’s expected payday for a massively successful Oscar winner made by a major studio.
‘When I finished making The Godfather, I was broke, not that I had ever had any money, but now I owed money,’ Pacino writes, via to Page Six. ‘My manager and agents got their cuts of my salary while I had to live on support from Jill Clayburgh.’
It wasn’t until 1983’s Scarface that Pacino had another huge hit. He writes that the Brian De Palma–directed reimagining was his most lucrative film ever.
‘To this day it’s still the biggest film I ever did. The residuals still support me,’ he writes. ‘I can live on it,’ he adds. ‘I mean, I could, if I lived like a normal person.’
