The iconic performance that hospitalised Al Pacino: “It was terrifying”
Acting might come with many benefits, like a hefty cheque, but it’s not a profession for the weak. In fact, sometimes it can push you right over the edge, and for Al Pacino, the filming of one of his most iconic films actually left him hospitalised.
It was the 1970s, and Pacino found himself cast as Michael Corleone in The Godfather alongside Hollywood legend Marlon Brando. He’d only appeared in two films before this – Me, Natalie and The Panic in Needle Park – but now he was ready to enter the big leagues. Clearly, Francis Ford Coppola recognised something in the relatively new actor and entrusted him to play such a vital role.
This was a smart decision, because Pacino became the only person you can imagine playing Michael, reprising his role in 1974’s Part II and 1990’s Part III. Despite the success he gained from the role, without it, who knows if he would’ve come to have such an illustrious run? – he found it incredibly challenging, and he made himself ill.
While stress is one of those things that it’s easy to try and push to one side, not taking the severity of your feelings seriously because ‘everyone gets stressed, right?’, if you don’t take a break and slow down for a moment, then you’re at real risk of burning out.
And sometimes burnout can come with illness, which Pacino learned the hard way during the shooting of the sequel, during which he found himself not only exhausted but diagnosed with “bronchial pneumonia”, he told Leonard Probst: “It was frightening.”
He continued, “This had to do with a combination of nervous exhaustion and my own need to get away, to pull out. I’m not very fond of doing films – it’s wear and tear on me.” Pacino found Michael a challenging character, and to play him as well as possible, he had to put himself in a mindset that wasn’t exactly pleasant.
Adding, “Drove me crazy. Drove me crazy. Godfather Two put me in the hospital. It was doing this character, the loneliness of him. I couldn’t be that guy and have a good time. I wanted to have stuff inside. We were working 20 weeks on that film. I was living with that weight all the time, and it was suffocating; it was hurting. In film, it’s much more difficult, especially Michael Corleone. It’s a film performance, it’s a character done on film.”
Pacino was nominated for Oscars for both The Godfather and its 1974 sequel, but he was ultimately unsuccessful in winning for either. Still, his performance was pretty legendary, and if you don’t first think of the actor as Tony Montana or Serpico, you probably first think of him as Corleone, the youngest son of Brando’s Vito, taking on his role as the family crime boss following his passing.
So, all of that success came at a price, although as he has gotten older, he has realised the importance of looking after himself. “The more experienced you become, the more aware you become, you start taking less and less out on your own experience, I think. Jimmy Dean did it to a great extent. He was very young, and it hurt him,” he concluded.
