The actor Al Pacino “wouldn’t dare” compare himself to
Comparison is a tricky thing, especially in a cut-throat business like Hollywood, where you are constantly being pitted against your peers and auditioning for the same roles. The film industry thrives on unhealthy competition, jealousy and inauthenticity, with many people getting ahead as a result of their ability to put themselves first and do whatever it takes to get ahead, leading to a professional world that feels like a really small and bitchy high school where everyone knows each other and many operate with a two-faced persona.
However, some still manage to remain somewhat humble in the face of great talent, and when surrounded by others they admire, humility becomes part of the job when working with people they deem as being in a whole other league. This was something that Al Pacino felt when he was often compared to another actor, and he felt uncomfortable with this high praise.
Pacino is one of the most recognisable faces from the New Hollywood movement, with the actor starring alongside the likes of Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando in pivotal classics that changed the industry forever. Whether it be The Godfather, Scarface or Scarecrow, the actor has demonstrated a strange ability to be both the most aggressively masculine character on screen with a scarily natural inclination for violence, while also being someone who appears deeply wounded and vulnerable. It’s a difficult territory to do both, but Pacino has done so through working with directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Mann on pictures that explore the complexities of masculinity.
However, while he is inarguably one of the most influential actors of his generation, he couldn’t stomach being compared to Dustin Hoffman, with both men being compared to each other and forced into a rivalry after being put up for so many of the same roles. In his memoir, Pacino wrote, “Pauline Kael, the renowned movie critic, used to say that I was influenced by Dustin Hoffman. Actually, what she said about me in Serpico was that I was ‘often indistinguishable’ from Dustin Hoffman”.
But despite their perceived similarities, Pacino was not one to jump on board with these comparisons, saying, “I didn’t dare compare myself to him; I loved him in The Graduate and as Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. I always thought that Dustin was a brilliant actor, but I didn’t feel we were on similar wavelengths”.
In many ways, this is true, with Hoffman displaying more of a sensitive and interior quality that allowed him to blend into the most complex and contradictory charaters, often using the method approach to fully live in the skin of each person he played, whether it be his devastating performance in Kramer VS Kramer, the intensity of All The President’s Men or the strange surrealism of The Graduate.
While they were often seen as being similar, they did not choose very similar projects, with the pair only starring alongside each other in the 1990 film Dick Tracy, directed by Warren Beatty. Despite being a strange choice for both of them, it finally put the rumours to bed and ended their elusive rivalry off-screen.
