Al Pacino (1940- ), American actor, born Alfredo James Pacino in New York. Pacino trained at the Actors Studio and made his screen debut in Me, Natalie (1969) while pursuing a full-time career in the theatre. His second film, Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park (1971), brought him star status, and in 1972 he effortlessly faced Marlon Brando in The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, without being upstaged—to such convincing effect that he starred in a further two films in The Godfather series.

Pacino is an actor of many facets, who excels at difficult roles, such as a crazy bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon (1975), a homosexual in Cruising (1980), and a breathtakingly elegant, tango-dancing blind man in what is possibly his greatest film to date, Scent of a Woman (1992). While Pacino can deliver truly virtuoso performances as over-the-top flamboyant characters, he is equally good at portraying the average man, with foibles and weaknesses, as seen in Frankie and Johnny (1991) and Carlito’s Way (1993). However, his particular speciality, the subtle suggestion that an idea or a feeling is gradually taking shape in his character’s mind, is best shown in The Godfather films, in which he is the incarnation of quiet fanaticism—and cold ferocity. The same masterly psychological control appears in his psychopathic portrait in Scarface (1983), directed by Brian de Palma, in his superbly believable trapper caught up in the American War of Independence in Hugh Hudson’s Revolution (1986), in his ruthless salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), his policeman relentlessly pursuing the gangster in Heat (1995), and his mobster in Donnie Brasco (1997). In 1999 he starred in The Insider, which received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Mann), and Best Actor (co-star Russell Crowe), and in Any Given Sunday (directed by Oliver Stone). The complex psychological thriller Insomnia (2002), a remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, saw Pacino playing a Los Angeles detective on a murder case in faraway Alaska, a land where the sun never sets and people live in continuous daylight. In 2003 he starred in the CIA thriller The Recruit and played the lawyer Roy Cohn in the television adaptation of Angels in America by Tony Kushner, winning a Best Actor Golden Globe for the role. He also played Shylock in a film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (2004) directed by Michael Radford, and a longtime gambling addict in the sports drama Two for the Money (2005).

In 1996 Pacino directed the documentary Looking for Richard, about Shakepeare’s Richard III. He followed this up in 2000 with Chinese Coffee, an adaptation of an Ira Lewis play about two struggling writers living in Greenwich Village. Pacino's Broadway credits include the role of Bickham in Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969), the title role in Richard III (1979), Walter Cole in American Buffalo (1983) by David Mamet, “Erie” Smith in Hughie (1996, also director) by Eugene O'Neill, and King Herod in Salome (1992, 2003) by Oscar Wilde—he also reprised the latter role in Los Angeles in 2006.