Brian De Palma, standing there alone by the surf and they were all waiting for him. And I never forgot that because it represented to me what a director is, what a director does.
AL PACINOIf you can identify with people, you can empathize with people and therefore you understand things.
More Al Pacino Quotes
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If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I’m in it, whatever that means.
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[Oscar Wilde’s Salome screenplay] is not autobiographical in a sense where you go to my house and see my kids and stuff like that, but that’s why I guess it’s semi-autobiographical.
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Really, I didn’t know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather, and by my mother.
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You’ve got to think of things as an opportunity. An audition’s an opportunity to have an audience.
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I thought it was time to show some of it, to show some of my feelings about things and what I preferred at the time. I prefer them still but not to the extent I did at the time.
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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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You’ll never be alone if you’ve got a book.
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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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A kiss is a lusty dollop of dessert to be served with desire and savored with passion.
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Vanity: my favorite sin.
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There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
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I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp…Then I’d find another one.
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I’d probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they’re the same thing.
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I love work because it keeps sex in perspective. Otherwise, it can become a preoccupation.
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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 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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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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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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Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There’s a liberation in that.
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Acting is hard work. At times, it’s very energizing and enervating.
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Either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.
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It wasn’t until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.
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Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren’t different things.
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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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Early on in my career, I remember running – fleeing – to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.
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