said, “The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers”. In other words, “Acting is simply more than walking out on the stage” as Dr. Stevenson would put it. It is more than just reading the lines. To be a true actor, I believe it takes inner capabilities such as learning life. In all the books I have read, all the chapters we have reviewed in class, and in all honesty…Al Pacino is an actor I cannot forget. He portrayed a ruthless gangster in the middle of his film career. And he states that he would rather be in a play than a movie. Some say that Pacino's fame was cemented with his true-to-life portrayals of urban tough guys on screen; his heart has always remained tethered to the stage. "The play is the thing. That's my motivation," Pacino commented in an interview about his double-duty as actor and director in his well-received 1996 documentary Looking for Richard. A love letter to Shakespeare and a forthright statement on the craft that has captured his imagination for over a quarter-century, the film sets about familiarizing audiences with one of Shakespeare's most dense and rich works, through deconstruction of scenes and interviews with Shakespearean scholars, with prominent actors like Sir John Gielgud, Kevin Kline, Winona Ryder, and Kenneth Branagh, and with your average men and women encountered on the street. Just when we all thought he'd cleaned up his act, he returned as his stock-in-trade urban crime figure in Donnie Brasco, and portrayed a Mephistophelean lawyer in Devil's Advocate (both 1997)As with many elements in life we all have to suffer rejection which, Pacino handle well when he was John Schlessinger's original pick for "Marathon Man" but was overruled by Studio executive Robert Evans, in favor of Dustin Hoffman. Evans would again try to oust Pacino from his role as Michael Corleone in the Godfather. Luckily Francis Coppola fought for ...
