“What was that, George, what were you doing?” And he said, “They were sleeping.” You’re always trying to catch them.
AL PACINOI like, for instance, ‘Serpico.’ I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could – I could embody him. I could, you know.
More Al Pacino Quotes
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Forget the career, do the work. If you feel what you are doing is on line and you’re going someplace and you have a vision and you stay with it, eventually things will happen.
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It’s very evocative; it’s like a first cut because you hear ‘She walked to the door,’ and you visualize all these things. ‘She opens the door’ . . . because you read the stage directions, too.
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If you can identify with people, you can empathize with people and therefore you understand things.
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My early career was a real rush of movies and stardom – it was almost overwhelming.
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It’s so funny when people who are not used to making movies get into it. You just can’t believe how insufferably boring it is.
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Learning (Shakespeare’s plays) …in school was a bit of a bore.
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Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.
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Read it to the class and then afterward we would talk and I would answer questions. It was really a way of expressing and finding out about where I was at that particular time, so it was very therapeutic for me.
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You need some insecurity if you’re an actor. It keeps the pot boiling. I haven’t yet started to think about retiring.
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Being the actors of the craft, the trade, one of the big things you do and you learn is about repeating.
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Except if something was maybe a play on television or some great television script.
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I want to be a great actor someday, and I’ve decided there’s no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.
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If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I’m an artist, I hate saying that.
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I understand it on a superficial level, but the depth of it just boggles my mind. I think it’s probably the greatest of all speeches ever written.
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Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.
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There’s something to learn from it. I’ve had movies that have failed colossally, so you kind of analyze your failures.
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I understand the directors much more. I was always rebelling against them when I was a youngster, I didn’t want to be told what to do. I had no identification.
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You don’t get to know anybody in a movie until after it’s over. You work less together in a film than you do onstage.
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I’ve always been a bit squeamish when it came to that kind of thing.
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A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don’t trust reading the scripts that much.
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I found out how temperamental I am, yes. And that sometimes that can be kind of off-putting.
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I believe in one day at a time; you’ve got TODAY, that’s what you’ ve got.
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I wouldn’t be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast.
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What he does with it, that’s something else, but he’s got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that’s why he has endured.
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When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I’m going to do a big scene that’s dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.
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Either I act or I die.
AL PACINO