How Al Pacino missed out on a rom-com goldmine: “I was going to play the part”
Imagine, if you can, a maddening universe where Al Pacino was predominantly known for romantic comedies.
It may be hard to picture, I know, for the rom-com just doesn’t seem to align with the career Pacino has crafted for himself, where crime and gritty drama take precedence, but things could’ve looked strikingly different if he had accepted a certain iconic role.
In 1990, Pacino starred in crime dramas like Dick Tracy and The Godfather Part III, as well as the long-forgotten The Local Stigmatic, but a credit in Pretty Woman could’ve led his career in another direction. Of course, the role of Edward Lewis in Garry Marshall’s film went to Richard Gere, but Pacino was actually in the running.
Pretty Woman was a mega-hit, standing as the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time when it was released, which, for a romantic comedy, was an impressive feat, and had audiences intrigued with the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold trope that introduced the world to Julia Roberts, her smile alone enough to charm viewers into the cinema. Gere had already appeared in movies like American Gigolo and Days of Heaven, but Pretty Woman asserted him as more of a romantic lead from then on, and while he continued starring in many crime thrillers, he couldn’t help but add more rom-coms to his repertoire.
In 1999, Marshall, Roberts, and Gere reteamed for Runaway Bride, which he followed with a role as a gynaecologist in the questionable rom-com Dr T & the Women, before starring opposite Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez in Shall We Dance?, becoming a pretty well-established leading man in the romantic genre all thanks to turn as rich businessman Edward Lewis, but just imagine if Pacino had taken on the role instead.
I’m not forgetting his one attempt at the genre with 1991’s Frankie and Johnny, but that didn’t hit the mark like Pretty Woman did, which saw him reuniting with his Scarface co-star Michelle Pfeiffer, and was still pretty rooted in drama, with Pacino playing a man recently released from prison, while Pfeiffer’s character suffers from some pretty intense emotional trauma. It was fairly successful, but it didn’t turn Pacino on to the world of rom-coms like the way Gere shifted.
“I read with Julia Roberts before Julia Roberts was a known actress,” Pacino told CNN, adding, “I was going to play the part,” before admitting that he turned Pretty Woman down, but knew that Roberts was set to be a star, having only appeared in a handful of movies by this point and nabbing an Oscar nomination for Steel Magnolias the year before.
“I could tell Julia Roberts was a great actress. I could; you could just see it. It was just so obvious. She had never done anything. I even said to Gary Marshall, ‘This girl, where did you find her?’” Despite Pacino being convinced that he had a “hit” on his hands, he still wasn’t sure about taking on the role.
“There’s a lot of reasons you don’t do a movie,” he said, “And there’s always, you know, sometimes it’s geography, sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s just not the right role for you, and you don’t feel you belong in that part.”
