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

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. It’s a questionable claim, especially given that in Pacino Barkin had perhaps the least naturalistic co-star imaginable.

Pacino is – albeit in his own highly idiosyncratic way – no less theatrical an actor than John Gielgud, more invested in the musicality of his line readings than in fidelity to the real. Think of the terrific scene towards the end of Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), when his character, the bouncily coiffed real estate salesman Ricky Roma, is tearing a strip off Kevin Spacey’s hapless office manager John Williamson for speaking out of turn and blowing a deal Roma was on the brink of closing.