The iconic masterpiece that drove Al Pacino “crazy”
The best performances are immersive. The performer should disappear into the part until the watcher no longer really notices who the actor is but is fully invested in the character in front of them. It’s no easy task for the person on the screen, though. Especially when it comes to dramatic or violent roles, sinking totally inside a different person is a challenging one, just as Al Pacino discovered.
There are countless stories of actors talking about the ways certain roles affected them. After making The Man On The Moon, Jim Carrey admitted to going so deep into his portrayal of Andy Kaufman that he felt like he couldn’t get out, being left “looking for Jim Carrey again and having trouble finding him”.
Anne Hathaway essentially starved herself to lose 25lbs and get into the destitute mindset of her Les Miserables role. In Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio was so entrenched in the mind of his character that he barely noticed when he sliced his hand open and just went on with the scene despite the injury.
There’s also the phenomenon of method acting, as performers dedicate themselves to not breaking character at all during the making of a certain project. But even if they don’t take it that far, every performance comes along with a level of surrender as the actor has to put their own personality aside to borrow another for a while.
To Pacino, that’s what makes an actor special: the skills required to take on a whole new being. “Good actors are made, and great actors are born,” he said, claiming that he never paid much attention during any formal acting training. Instead, he simply relies on and trusts his ability to become a character, blocking out external noise or acting methods to stay in the brain of the role.
That has led to some of cinema history’s finest performances but has also been a complete headache for the actor himself. When playing a role as domineering and villainous as Michael Corleone, the protagonist of The Godfather films, disappearing inside a mind that dark can be tough. But then, to have to return to it for two sequels became a real nightmare for Pacino.
While talking about the first movie and the restaurant scene where his character kills two men, Pacino said, “[It] drove me crazy.”
But the first sequel was on another level. “Godfather Two put me in the hospital,” he added. “It was doing this character, the loneliness of him. I couldn’t be that guy and have a good time.” But to get a good performance, Pacino had to put all that aside and step fully into Corleone. “I was living with that weight all the time, and it was suffocating. It was hurting,” he revealed.
To Pacino, that’s the difference between cinema and theatre. “In film, it’s much more difficult—especially Michael Corleone. It’s a film performance; it’s a character done on film. You don’t do that on the stage. And in the theatre, there’s a chance to step outside of it, become artistic, objective, and not take it out on your hide,” he observed.
But as he’s got older and more mature, that’s his main takeaway, that even though getting the character right is essential, so is protecting yourself. “The more experienced you become, the more aware you become. You start taking less and less out on your own experience,” he concluded, providing words of wisdom to the younger generations who look up to him.
