Al Pacino’s legendary performance as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather may not have become a reality if not for the Scarface star proving himself.
Pacino, in his new memoir Sonny Boy, revealed how the studio questioned “whether [he] was the right actor” for the role of Michael Corleone during the auditioning process.
“Paramount didn’t want me to play Michael Corleone,” he said in an excerpt of his memoir as per The Guardian.
“They wanted Jack Nicholson,” he said.
“They wanted Robert Redford. They wanted Warren Beatty or Ryan O’Neal. In the book, Puzo had Michael calling himself ‘the sissy of the Corleone family.’,” he added.
“He was supposed to be small, dark-haired, handsome in a delicate way, no visible threat to anybody. That didn’t sound like the guys that the studio wanted. But that didn’t mean it had to be me.”
Pacino went on to explain that although he felt he wasn’t wanted for the role, his manager managed to convince him to fly over to California and screen test for the part.
“It did mean, however, that I would have to screen-test for the role, which I had never done before, and that I would have to fly out to the West Coast to do it, which I just didn’t want to do,” he explained.
“I did not care that it was The Godfather. I was a bit afraid of flying and I didn’t want to go to California. But my manager, Marty Bregman, said to me, ‘You’re getting on that fu**ing plane.’”
“He brought me a pint of whiskey so I could drink it on the flight, and I got there,” he added.
Despite not being wanted by the studio, Pacino further explained how he knew The Godfather director Coppola had a keen interest in him nabbing the role during the auditioning process.
“But here’s the secret: Francis wanted me. He wanted me and I knew that,” he said.
“And there’s nothing like when a director wants you,” he added.
“He also gave me a gift in the form of Diane Keaton. He had a few actors he was auditioning for the role of Kay, but the fact that he wanted to pair me up with Diane suggested she had an edge in the process.”
“I knew she was doing well in her career and had been appearing on Broadway in shows like Hair and Play It Again, Sam with Woody Allen. A few days before the screen test, I met Diane in Lincoln Center in New York City at a bar, and we just hit it off.”
“She was easy to talk to and funny, and she thought I was funny too. I felt like I had a friend and an ally right away,” he continued.
Pacino went on to reveal that after only a week and a half of filming the movie, the studio was “once again questioning whether I was the right actor for the part.”
“Finally, Francis determined that something had to be done. (…) At this point, we had been shooting The Godfather for about a week and a half. And Francis said, ‘Well, you’re not cutting it.'”
“I felt that one in the pit of my stomach.”
“It’s when it finally hit me that my job was on the line,” he recalled.
Although unsure whether Coppola did this “deliberately”, Pacino recalled how the director “did move up the filming of the Italian restaurant scene, where the untested Michael comes to take his revenge on Sollozzo and McCluskey.”
“That scene was not meant to be filmed until a few days later, but if something hadn’t happened to let me show what I was capable of, there might not have been a later for me.”
However, the scene itself allowed Pacino to prove he was the man for the job, “hen Francis showed the restaurant scene to the studio, and when they looked at it, something was there.”
“Because of that scene I just performed, they kept me in the film.”
“So I didn’t get fired from The Godfather,” he said.
“I just kept doing what I did, what I had thought about on those lonely walks up and down the length of Manhattan. I did have a plan, a direction that I really believed was the way to go with this character. And I was certain that Francis felt the same way.”
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