Filmstar: Al Pacino with 85 – old dad with many roles

At well over 80 years old, Al Pacino completes a full workload, not only in front of the camera. The father of four is also not to be broken privately – his youngest son is just under two years old. The Hollywood star, who celebrates his 85th birthday today, had become a father again in June 2023. The mother of Söhnchen Roman is the film producer Noor Alfallah, now 31 years old.

Pacino (“Der Pate”, “The Irishman”) also has three adult children of two women, a 35-year-old daughter and 24-year-old twins with actress Beverly d’Angelo. However, he was never married.

Confessions in his memoirs

He speaks to the late father joys in his memoirs “Sonny Boy”, who came onto the market last autumn. For the little son to record his life in writing, he motivated him to write autobiography, says Pacino in an interview with the “New York Times”. This also drives him to live as a little longer as possible. The aging feels “absurd and crazy”, says Pacino. In the interview, he looks back on a serious covid disease in 2020, where he almost died. The emergency service was called. He had no pulse for a short time.

But the actor has long since recovered. He stands in front of the camera. This summer he can be seen in the exorcism thriller “The Ritual” in a leading role as a priest who is exhausting the devil. A few weeks ago, a trailer voted on the strip of director David Midell. In the thriller “on behalf of the devil” (1997), Pacino himself played a lawyer behind whom the devil hides.

Several films are currently in production, including the thriller “Assassination” about the murder of US President John F. Kennedy with co-star Jessica Chastain and the Shakespeare adaptation “Lear Rex” with Pacino as King Lear. In addition, the Oscar winner recently promised the hostage-taking thriller “Dead Man’s Wire” by director Gus van Sant.

Last year, Pacino was seen alongside Michael Keaton in the thriller “A Killer’s Memory”. Johnny Depp took him in front of the camera for his second directorial project “Modi” about the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920).

On the Oscar stage, Pacino was still in the spotlight in 2024 when he handed over the trophy for the top film “Oppenheimer” at the end of the gala. In the course of his long career, he had been nominated nine times for Hollywood’s highest price, most recently in 2020 for his supporting role in “The Irishman”. In the mafiaepos of star director Martin Scorsese, alongside Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci, he played the union leader Jimmy Hoffa.

Pacino went away empty-handed at this Oscar ceremony, but he already had a gold boy. 20 years after his first Oscar nomination for “Der Pate” (1973), in 1993 he made it to the Oscar stage with the role of the blind ex-officer and predatory charmurs Frank Slade in “The Fragrance of Women”. Previously, he had been nominated for appearances in films such as “Serpico” (as a broken cop), “Hundstage” (as a hostage -taker) or “Glengarry Glen Ross” (as a ceased real estate agent).

Of course, it was his representation of Michael Corleone in the mafia drama “The Godfather” (“The Godfather”) that made Pacino a star. At that time, director Francis Ford Coppola prevailed against skeptical producers who thought the young Italo-American Alfredo James Pacino was too soft for the role of the son of the “godfather” Don Corleone (Marlon Brando). In the mafia trilogy (1972-1990), Pacino’s figure changed from the student to the cold-blooded head of the family clan.

Pacino had no easy childhood. After his parents’ early divorce, he grew up under poor conditions among the Sicilian grandparents in the New York Bronx. His mother Rose sometimes worked in a cinema. He already discovered the love of acting as a teenager.

He gained initial experience at the New York theater group “The Living Theater”. Pacino took lessons with Charles Laughton and the legendary “Method” teacher Lee Strasberg. At the end of 20 he stood on the New York stages, on the canvas for the first time in 1970 as a neurotic drug dealer in “Panic in Needle Park”.

Despite his Hollywood career, the Shakespeare fan remained loyal to the theater and repeatedly returned to the stage, such as in Oscar Wildes “Salome”, in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, in Brecht’s “Rise and Fall of Arturo Ui” and in “King Oedipus” by Sophocles. In 2015 he appeared in the drama “China Doll” at New York Broadway.

Not all Pacino films were successful. For example, the comedy “Jack and Jill” (2011) with Adam Sandler in a double role as a twin couple was completely torn by the critics. Pacino was in a guest role as a celebrity that turns an advertising film himself. The Klamauk won ten “golden raspberries” sperm prices in Hollywood, also for Pacino as a “worst support actor”.

But the character actor apparently reconciled with “Jack and Jill”. It is precisely this film that he would recommend his little son to watch the multitude of his works first, said Pacino of the New York Times. He thought he was funny. He accepted the role at the time because he urgently needed money after losing his millions of assets through a fraudulent accountant.