The performance that appalled Al Pacino: “I can’t believe I did that”
Al Pacino has delivered enough great performances across his career to put most other actors to shame. As Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, he is a cornerstone of one of the most beloved film series of all time. Then there’s Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon, Heat, Donnie Brasco—and, of course, his greatest career achievement, Jack & Jill. For the record (and for Mr Pacino’s lawyers), that was a joke.
Awful ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’ commercials to one side, it’s hard to imagine the great man being disappointed with any of his work. All actors are perfectionists, however, especially the ones who know just how good they can be. Even somebody of Pacino’s calibre lets themselves down from time to time, and for the man himself, there’s one performance in particular that continues to haunt him.
When speaking to Rawk Blog, the Oscar winner spoke about his career and how he has coped with getting older. “Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would’ve wanted to play 10 years ago, I don’t want to play now,” he explained. “I was watching Revolution, and the things I did in that picture, holy smokes! I can’t believe I did that, it’s like another person. It’s the thought of it, it’s just appalling to me.”
Released in 1985, Revolution is a historical picture set during the American War of Independence and directed by Hugh Hudson of Chariots of Fire fame. Pacino plays Tom Dobb, a fur trapper who accidentally becomes embroiled in the American side fighting for independence against the British. A young Dexter Fletcher plays his son, while the late great Donald Sutherland appears as an antagonistic British officer. The movie proved to be a massive disappointment in multiple ways. Not only did it tank at the box office, but Pacino had a horrible time filming it, even contracting pneumonia on set. He took four years off movies as a result, eventually returning with the comeback triumph Sea of Love.
When asked to elaborate on why Revolution upset him so much, Pacino didn’t mention his medical issues, instead keeping things focused on his performance. “The physical stamina that that took. I was just shocked by it,” he said of the part. “I didn’t think I had it in me ever, and I wasn’t terribly young when I did it. I was in my early forties. That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.”
This interview was released in 2007, 22 years after Revolution first hit theatres. Pacino was looking back on his 45-year-old self as a man in his late 60s, so he was always going to feel a certain sense of shock. It’s not like he’d slowed down much by this point in his career, taking on almost as many roles as he was back in the 1980s, but the characters he was playing at this point in time were very different. His days of dodging British bullets were far behind him.
Even now, as he’s in his mid-80s, Pacino is still working an insane schedule. Maybe he was being a bit harsh on poor Revolution, or maybe he was finally taking revenge on the movie that almost killed him.
