The “graphic” scene Al Pacino dreaded shooting: “It can become sort of borderline porn”
As one of the greatest actors of all time and a student of Lee Strasberg who embraced the method from an early age, Al Pacino has never had any issues launching himself headlong into character.
Whether he was living life as a blind man to prepare for his Academy Award-winning performance in Scent of a Woman, spending every waking moment as Scarface‘s Tony Montana, or shadowing the real Frank Serpico to play him in the titular movie, he was famed for his immersion.
Obviously, he doesn’t really feel the need to do that anymore, and he’s earned the right not to. After all, Pacino is a living legend and a titan of American cinema, and since the majority of his filmography over the last decade or so has been completely forgettable, it would be pointless if he did anyway.
Regardless of how far he’s willing to push himself, how many months he’s willing to dedicate to a character before a single frame of footage has been shot, there are some things that he’s never been comfortable with, and few things make him more trepidatious than the beast with two backs.
Most actors will be required to film a sex scene or two throughout their careers, and while intimacy coordinators have improved things significantly, hesitance is something that can’t be eradicated. For Pacino, the mere prospect of fictional fornication fills him with dread, but he soldiered on nonetheless.
It was for one of the most important movies he ever made, too, with 1989’s Sea of Love heralding his grand return to the silver screen. Following the dismal Revolution, which flopped spectacularly at the box office and landed him on the Razzies shortlist for ‘Worst Actor’, he tucked his tail between his legs and vanished for four years.
He was ready to quit the business altogether until Diane Keaton convinced him that signing on for Harold Becker’s thriller was a much better idea than disappearing into the ether, and she was right; the picture made over $110 million at the box office amid strong reviews, and Pacino was suddenly back in the game. Still, there was one sexually-charged moment he was dreading.
“I’m not usually one to perform graphic lovemaking scenes, and I don’t think many other actors like to do them, either,” he wrote in his memoir, Sonny Boy. “It can become sort of borderline porn.”
Still, it was in the script, so he had to grin and bear it. His grizzled detective falls for one of the main suspects in the serial killer case he’s investigating, which necessitated “a long, slow sex scene where Ellen Barkin holds me against a wall and gives me a bit of a pat-down before our two characters start going at it.”
He conceded that the scene was “brilliantly choreographed”, but that didn’t mean he was enthusiastic about bumping uglies.
Shooting sex scenes is something that Pacino has never found to be a particularly pleasant experience, but he took one for the team. It was hardly gratuitous, either, since it both benefitted and advanced the narrative, making his least favourite kind of sequence one that he knew he couldn’t try and fight against.
