The insulting moment Al Pacino decided to boycott the Oscars
He might well be the greatest actor of his generation, and because of that, Al Pacino has been recognised by awards ceremonies for most of his career.
Of course, the biggest awards show of them all is the Oscars, and Pacino has been regularly nominated by the Academy for his performances, taking nine nominations in a glittering career. But one nomination was an insult to the actor.
The Godfather is often seen as one of the finest movies ever made, and the moment Pacino launched his career in earnest. His starring role as Michael Corleone was a standout moment in his professional life, and it would provide Pacino with his first Academy Award nomination.
Pacino’s Michael Corleone is the defining hero in the story. He is the lifeblood of the picture and the reason it became a classic. “Michael has to start out ambivalent, almost unsure of his place,” Pacino explained of his determination of the character. “He’s caught between his Old World family and the postwar American Dream.”
The first ever nomination for an Oscar should be something that is rejoiced in. It’s the stuff of dreams for any aspiring performer who hasn’t found themselves accepting an award in the shower, practising their speech or pretending to be furious at being cut short by the music? But the actor didn’t take the news well and, in fact, was annoyed that his nomination came in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category.
One of 11 nominations for the movie, Pacino was left frustrated that his role as Michael was determined to be a supporting one, while his co-star, Marlon Brando, got his nomination in the ‘Best Actor’ category despite being on screen for less time than Pacino. The younger actor told his longtime friend Lawrence Grobel that he felt “insulted” by the decision.
The moment was so insulting in fact that Pacino decided he would not honour the nomination by even attending the awards. It was a sign of disrespect at the event he described as “arbitrary”. It was a brutal blow for the event organisers who were left dumbfounded by the decision. Things got worse.
Marlon Brando would go on to win his category, taking home the prize for ‘Best Actor’, but when he was announced as the winner, he had decided to stay home but for different reasons. Brando would send Sacheen Littlefeather in his place, who made a bold statement about the treatment of Native Americans in the movie industry and enraged many members of the Academy.
The awards show would go down in history for that moment, leaving Pacino’s boycott as a mere footnote, but it did raise a serious point. If an award becomes so deeply constructed then should we really be paying that much attention to them in the first place?
Of course, Pacino soon got over this feeling and would be nominated eight more times, finally winning ‘Best Actor’ for Scent of a Woman, which he did show up for.
