Al Pacino’s big mistake in the 1970s could’ve changed his whole career: “I don’t regret anything”
Everyone knows about the butterfly effect, that if you’d decided to do one thing in your life differently, no matter how minor, you might’ve ended up somewhere else. But we can’t predict the path that a decision will take us down, and we can’t regret the ones that we didn’t take. What’s the point?
That’s something that Al Pacino staunchly believes, even if he has turned down some major movie roles in the past that could’ve been huge for him. Of course, it’s not like he has ever needed a career boost; one of his earliest roles was in The Godfather, which started an impressive run of hits that made him one of the biggest stars of the 1970s, but he missed out on a movie that changed the world.
That might sound a little dramatic, but Pacino was offered a role in a certain 1977 movie that altered the course of pop culture forever. “That was my first big mistake,” he told The Talks. Of course, I’m referring to Star Wars. Yet, despite the fact that Pacino rejected the chance to star in the sci-fi blockbuster, which became the highest-grossing movie of all time upon its release, he knows that he ultimately made the right decision.
“I don’t regret anything. I feel that I’ve made what I would call mistakes,” he said, “I picked the wrong movie, or I didn’t pursue a character, or I played somebody and made some choices… But everything you do is a part of you. And you get something from it. And I mean, the idea and excitement of being in these situations and places, they are more than just memories; they inform your life. So I don’t regret anything.”
In a way, it’s hard to imagine Pacino in Star Wars, because he’d spent the ‘70s in gritty movies like The Panic in Needle Park, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Godfather Part II. It’s difficult to picture him in a child-friendly space opera. Pacino certainly could’ve pursued a new angle in his career if he’d taken on the part of Han Solo, but instead it was Harrison Ford who bagged the role and subsequently became a star.
Why did he turn it down, though? After all, it would’ve given him the biggest pay cheque of his life, and who wouldn’t want that? Pacino, apparently. He just couldn’t understand why he’d been offered the part.
“I didn’t get it. I didn’t know why I’d do it,” he revealed, “It was at that time in my career where I was offered everything. I was in The Godfather. They didn’t care if I was right or wrong for the role, if I could act or not act.”
Imagine if Pacino had gone down the sci-fi route at this point in his career. Would he have still become Scarface’s Tony Montana a few years later? Would he have continued to take on dramatic roles over the coming years that would establish him as a champion of gangster and crime movies? It’s hard to say.
As great an actor as Pacino is, he certainly wasn’t right for the part of Han Solo at all, and it’s a good thing he was able to recognise that from the get-go and instead continue on a path that suited him much better.
