The Al Pacino performance that inspired Jeremy Allen White in ‘The Bear’
Even as the veteran actor approaches his mid-1980s, the influence of Al Pacino still resonates with countless performers across the world of television and film. Through iconic roles in works like Scarface, Heat, and The Godfather, to name only a few, the New York actor has forever cemented his place in cinema history. Although he has understandably slowed down somewhat in recent years, his legacy is continued by actors like Jeremy Allen White, who use Pacino as an endless source of inspiration.
White has been in the acting game since childhood, but his first proper taste of fame came in 2011 when he began starring in the long-running comedy-drama Shameless. An American adaptation of the British original, Shameless ran for an entire decade before going off air in 2021. Following its conclusion, White, who had been on board the production from its very beginning, playing the character of Lip, was stuck in a bit of a rut, unsure of what to do next.
If you spend ten years doing anything, it will inevitably be difficult to break that habit. Speaking to GQ, the actor shared, “There was a period where I stopped feeling like an actor, and I started feeling like I was just here to do [Shameless].” Seemingly, though, White found solace and inspiration in the work of Al Pacino, spurring him on to take on bold new projects like The Bear.
One of the most memorable television shows of recent years, The Bear, sees Carmy Berzatto—played by White—take over his dead brother’s Italian sandwich shop in Chicago. To bring the character to life and distance himself from the world of Lip and Shameless, White looked to Pacino for inspiration, particularly the 1971 film The Panic in Needle Park.
Starring Pacino in his first-ever leading role, the film centres around a group of heroin addicts in Manhattan and the doomed love story between Bobby – played by Pacino – and Helen – Katy Winn. While the film might not have enjoyed the same impact or notoriety as some of Pacino’s later work, the role of a heroin addict and pusher allowed the actor to establish his intensity and unpredictability as a performer, which was then expanded upon in later roles.
Although portraying the owner of an Italian beef sandwich shop isn’t quite the same as being a 1970s New York heroin addict, Jeremy Allen White reportedly took a lot of inspiration from the early Pacino role when creating the character of Berzatto. “I wanted to bring some of that unstillness to Carmy,” the actor once shared. Indeed, if you go back and watch The Bear, particularly those early episodes, Berzatto is wildly unpredictable and often feels as if he is toeing the line between sanity and completely losing control.
You can certainly draw parallels between The Bear and The Panic In Needle Park, as both works are centred around an individual in difficult circumstances chasing success and happiness but looking in the wrong direction. As a result, both characters have a sense of desperation and, as White himself said, unstillness.
Al Pacino has influenced countless actors over the course of his long and illustrious career in film and television. Each new role added new and diverse layers to the performance style of the actor, and people like Jeremy Allen White certainly took note of that style. The fact that Pacino continues to be so influential, decades after his heyday, suggests that his impact will never truly die out within the world of filmmaking.
