Nat Segnit

From street urchin to superstar: the unlikely career of Al Pacino

As a child, ‘Sonny Boy’ was left to run wild, and there was always something of the feral kid about the actor of whom Elizabeth Taylor once said: ‘That boy needs all the help he can get’

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather II. Credit: Alamy 
issue 26 October 2024
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  • Sonny Boy: A Memoir

    Al Pacino

    Century, pp. 400, £25

Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino’s lover-cum-prime- suspect in his comeback movie Sea of Love (1989), once dismissed the artifice of the British acting tradition (by way of an oddly ill-tempered pop at Nigel Havers) by comparing it with the immersive naturalism of the greats of post-war American cinema: Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

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