Halfway through his new memoir, Al Pacino recounts a crisis that occurred during the filming of The Godfather in Sicily. While shooting a wedding scene with Simonetta Stefanelli, director Francis Ford Coppola asked Pacino to communicate with the local extras, none of whom spoke English. Despite having grown up in an Italian household in New York, Pacino struggled with the language. Later, when Coppola asked the bride and groom to dance a waltz, Pacino admitted he couldn’t do it. The situation escalated when the couple was supposed to drive away in a car, but Pacino, the quintessential New Yorker, didn’t know how to drive. This prompted Coppola to lose his temper and exclaim, “Why did I ever hire you? What can you do?”
Coppola’s pointed question echoes throughout Sonny Boy. How did a delinquent school dropout from the South Bronx rise to become one of the most compelling actors on screen? Pacino has played unforgettable antiheroes, from the explosive Tony Montana in Scarface to the vulnerable Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, and the conflicted Michael Corleone in the Godfather trilogy, whose lines resonate deeply, such as “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment” and “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone.”
Some may trivialize his impressive career in the 1970s and 80s as merely a string of crime dramas—his former manager Martin Bregman often boasted, “You want a successful film? Put Pacino on the poster with a gun”—but they overlook that Pacino won his only Oscar for his poignant role as a blind lieutenant colonel in Scent of a Woman and has directed documentaries on Richard III and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. His legacy is in part founded on an ability to improvise and adapt. For those who remember The Godfather, it’s clear that Michael Corleone did dance at his wedding and drove his bride away.
Sonny Boy opens with a gripping portrayal of Pacino’s postwar childhood, characterized by rooftops and cigarettes in alleys. After his parents separated when he was just two, Pacino and his mother moved in with her parents in the Bronx. Movies became an essential form of entertainment for young Sonny, who was nicknamed after an Al Jolson song. His grandfather, a plasterer, immigrated from a Sicilian town called Corleone.
The experience of growing up in a fractured home, compounded by his mother’s mental health challenges—she underwent electroshock treatments and attempted suicide when he was six—shaped Pacino profoundly. Despite these challenges, he acknowledges that his mother’s strictness steered him away from more dangerous paths. While he cooled off with baseball, it was acting that drew him in, earning him the label of “the next Marlon Brando.”
Pacino would later share the screen with Brando in The Godfather, but in his 20s, he saw himself primarily as a theater actor. He took on odd jobs while attending acting classes, remembering Martin Sheen as a fellow student. He began performing frequently in off-Broadway productions and spent his spare time riding the subway, immersed in the works of Chekhov and Balzac, or reciting Shakespeare and O’Neill in quiet alleyways. By age 26, he was accepted into the renowned Actors’ Studio and even ventured to Boston for repertory theater.
The latter part of the memoir falls short of matching the vivid depiction of his early hardships. Instead, it recycles anecdotes from interviews and talk shows. Most readers would already be aware that Paramount Pictures initially opposed Pacino’s casting in The Godfather or that he turned to alcohol to cope with sudden fame.
There’s a sense that Pacino has been in the limelight for too long; he muses on how playing Tony Montana “uncorked the underclass” within him and fantasizes about an alternate life that didn’t involve acting. He even ties his romantic relationships to his professional timeline, reflecting on his involvement with Tuesday Weld while working on Serpico and later with Kathleen Quinlan during Scarface.
However, moments that reveal Pacino’s unwavering dedication to his craft help elevate this memoir. He shares that the happiest period of his life was during the making of Looking for Richard and encourages younger actors to embrace their stories as if they were their own. Despite being 84 and thriving in Hollywood, he reflects on the lost lives of childhood friends from the Bronx due to substance abuse, with one friend dubbing him “a miracle”—a sentiment he understands but doesn’t fully believe.
Sonny Boy: A Memoir by Al Pacino is published by Cornerstone (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
