An actor basically likes to be asked to do something, no matter what position he’s in. It feels more natural. Sitting and waiting is more gratifying.
AL PACINOWhen you’re reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call “taking up with a writer,” something happens.
More Al Pacino Quotes
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I can see [ talent or curiosity for acting] in my oldest daughter [Julia Marie Pacino]. I don’t know how long she’ll run away from it, but it’s there in her.
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“What was that, George, what were you doing?” And he said, “They were sleeping.” You’re always trying to catch them.
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The story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I’m struggling with.
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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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Many years ago, in the late ’70s, I toured colleges along the East Coast and I presented a kind of show where I got a lot of books and poetry and pieces of [William] Shakespeare and other writers that I admire.
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If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it’s just great fodder for you. It’s wonderful source stuff that we die for.
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[Salomaybe] is my presentation, my vision of the world. Not so much to satisfy the audience at large.
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You’re going to get a sense of what the hell’s going on there. Boy, you’ll wake up fast when bullets are flying over your head.
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Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren’t different things.
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Anybody who cares about what he does takes risks.
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I destroy it because it’s no longer coming from my unconscious.
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Shakespeare is one of the reasons I’ve stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words.
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And I didn’t think about the material as much. But sometimes I’ve thought about the material a lot and thought I was doing the right thing, and it didn’t work out.
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Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.
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I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn’t want to do movies that much.
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When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you.
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What’s this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare?
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I didn’t want the book [of memoirs] out, naturally – Larry [Grobel] knew that for 20 years, 15 at least,
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I would come home and she would tell me about her life that day and all her problems and I remember saying to her, look, you really got me through this picture because I would shed everything when I came home.
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All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.
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I want to be interesting in an interview just as much as I want to do well in a part.
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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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Or try out what I learned and see how it worked with an audience, because where are you gonna get an audience?
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I’ve been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That’s the stuff my dreams are made of.
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I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.
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I wouldn’t be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast.
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